(The Power of Names, Uncovering The M PDF

THE P OWER OF NAMES
THE P OWER OF NAMES
Uncovering the Mystery of

What We Are Called
Mavis Himes
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Title: The power of names : uncovering the mystery of what we are called / by Mavis Himes.
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To the memory of my parents
Louis ben Moishe v Chaya and
Miriam bat Hymie v Bertha
When, as a child, I wrote my name for the first time,
I knew I was beginning a book.
Edmond Jabs, The Book of Questions, vol. 1
NOM, name, should be read twice, from left to right

and from right to left.
Because two words compose it: NOM and MON, my name.
This name is mine. All names are personal.
Edmond Jabs, The Book of Resemblances, vol. 2
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Prologue xi
PART I: CALLED INTO EXISTENCE 1

1 An Invitation into Being 3
2 Names with Power 13
3 Go Out and Name 23
4 Names and Nomads 33
5 Choosing Names 43
6 Celebrating Names 59
PART II: BURDEN OR BLESSING 71

7 The Strange Fate of Names 73
8 Transmission and Inheritance 81
9 Who We Are Is Always There 91
10 The Family Tree of Life 97
11 In the Name of the Father 109
12 Voluntary Name-Changing 127
13 Involuntary Name-Changing 145
14 A House Is Not a Home 163
Appendix: The Language of Names 185

Bibliography 201
vii
viii CONTENTS
Notes 207
Index 213
About the Author 225
PREFACE
I wrote this book to interact with my own name through an exploration

of names and naming more generally. Naturally, my thoughts and ideas
about names and naming have been influenced by my work as a practic-
ing psychoanalyst. Throughout my adult life and now in writing this
book, my clinical practice and theoretical orientation have deepened
my appreciation of the power of speech and language, in general, and of
names, in particular. As a result, I have come to value the broad impact
of proper names and the significant role they play in our lives.
Most of us do not stop to question our name; it is simply a given.
Rarely do we stop and explore its meaning or significance, as if assum-
ing a predetermined and fixed nature that requires little thought. In our
current times, an explosion of genealogical research, courtesy of the
Internet, may change this and bring names into a topic of interest.
Moreover, a more recent trend of name-changing may also provoke
some people to become more aware of the name they have been as-
signed.
In discovering the web of influence woven by my own name, I also
realized the extent to which I have been formed by my own Jewish
heritage. Consequently, detailed illustrations of my own ethnic roots
have found their way into these pages. I hope my journey will inspire
others to question and reflect on their own unique ancestral histories.
As I considered the forms and structures of names, I also became
increasingly fascinated by the derivation of word meanings. To consider
the lingering traces of word usage from their first appearance to the
ix
x P REFA CE
transformed yet subtle changes in meaning that occur over time in-
trigued and entertained me. Bastardizations and extensions of particu-
lar words and their reappropriated connotations added a further dimen-
sion of understanding. Also finding their way into this book are the
narratives and vignettes of my patients and the friends and colleagues
who sustained me during my research. It never ceased to amaze me
how often those with whom I spoke on this subject had a story to share
with me, if not about their own name then about the name of a friend,
relative, or acquaintance. The spelling of names, the pronunciation of
names, the meaning of names and name changesall made their way
into a variety of conversations.
I discovered that people were comfortable sharing personal stories
in social settings; talk of the proper name inevitably led to conversations
about families and their origins. If I was at table with a group of ten
friends, there would be ten stories; twelve people and there would be
twelve stories. Some people claimed a deep attachment to their name,
while others demonstrated disdain or indifference. Some said their
name had a significant impact on their life, opening doors or creating a
certain confidence, whereas others shied away from their name, dislik-
ing the sound or pronunciation, the associations or the history. I am
indebted to all those people who, knowingly or unknowingly, contrib-
uted in some way to this work and helped me recognize the power of
the proper name as a shorthand and metaphor for ones personal life.
This book is a journey into the power and significance of this proper
name, a name proper to each unique individual. While I have included
some mention of First Nations and African cultures, these are certainly
outnumbered in these pages by names, naming rituals, and etymologi-
cal citations related to Western culture. However, I hope readers imag-
inations will carry them to other associations and places with which they
may be familiar.
Finally, due to the sensitive and personal nature of this material, I
did not include personal stories without permission and, in many cases,
without certain modifications. Any references to my patients and their
names have also been modified and disguised to protect confidentiality.
In certain cases, I have had full consent to use exact name spellings.
Mavis Himes
Toronto, September 2014
PROLOGUE
In my dream, I am shaking hands with Jacques Lacan. I ask him his

name and he replies, with a smile, Why, my name is Jacques Lacano-
vitch.
This may seem a strange person to appear in ones dreams, but for
me it was not a surprise. At the time I was undergoing my analytic
formation in Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Lacan was in the forefront of
my thoughts. Jacques Lacan was an iconoclast, a rebel, a radical thinker
and a brilliant psychoanalyst, a man whose name was synonymous with
originality, creativity, and innovation in the field of Freudian psycho-
analysis. Often referred to as the French Freud, he read and reread,
worked and reworked, the texts of the venerable old man of psychoanal-
ysis, creating a new way to talk about and practice psychoanalysis. Nor
was it surprising that I would have dreamed of Lacan with those letters
appended to his name. During that phase of my personal analysis, I had
been speaking about my name, Mavis Himes, and had looked into the
fact that my father and his siblings had legally changed their surname
from Heimovitch to Himes. Wouldnt you know it but those missing
letters had gone and attached themselves in my dream to this grand old
master. The dream rekindled my interest in my name and its impact on
my life, to research the question of the proper name: How does the
proper name function? And how does a name change, either voluntary
or by coercion, affect the bearer of the name?
Most of us take our names for granted. Yet our first nameboth an
introduction and a greetingis one of the first words we learn. As-
xi
xi i P ROLOGUE
signed to us by our parents with love, it is freighted with their expecta-

tions and hopes for our future. Our surname, meanwhile, carries our
collective history: It is a branding of transmission and affiliation, linking
us to our ancestral past.
Our name rolls off our tongue with ease and familiarity. It is a sig-
nifier around which our identity is intimately linked. It travels with us
like a passport, testifying to our unique presence on this earth. It is a
permanent marker that functions as a shorthand for who we are, conjur-
ing up a mosaic of associations: Kennedy, Shakespeare, Einstein, Stalin,
Muhammad. Lacan once said that a search for origins was a mythic
journey, a return to a legendary past. The proper name returns us to
that beginning and brings us closer to that mythic first step. From birth
to death, our name is the signature of our personal journey through life.
Our name accompanies us as a faithful and, in most cases, permanent
marker of identification, that permanent abode in which we live.
Part I
Called into Existence

1
AN INVITATION INTO BEING
At the moment of conception, and even earlier, when our existence is

only a fantasy in the minds of our parents, we are assigned a name. Your
name will be Elizabeth Mary Ferguson, born on this September 7,
2014, in the city of Toronto, Canada. This is the name by which you will
be called. And through this naming, Elizabeth Mary Ferguson will be
inscribed into a world of speech and language, symbolized by her name.
Just like the physical cut from the umbilicus that separates us from our
mother, so our given name creates a first psychological scansion, or
division, from our biological parents and heralds us into the world with
a particular mark of identity.
And so it is that when we are asked the question Who are you? it is
by pronouncing our name, that kernel of our most intimate identity,
that we first respond. Through our proper name we greet the world,
and the world, in turn, greets us. The prominence of our name is con-
spicuous in its enunciation. As a patient of mine once said, I live within
the confines of my screwed-up family matrix, and my name is simply a
relic, all that is left of a washed-out historical fact. And I am confronted
with it every day when asked the question: And what is your name, sir?
This name, assigned at childbirth, is the ongoing birthplace in which we
live. We savor our name as we speak it; it rolls around in our mouth and
off our tongue in a familiar, facile way. Even the accent with which we
pronounce the unique combination of syllables is particular to our very
intimate sense of self.
3
4 CHA P TER 1
Our name is also the physical substrate of our being, of both the
internal and external passport we carry through life. As a record of our
birth in a country of origin, it allows us to freely enter and depart from
foreign lands. Without a name, there is no passport, no social security or
social insurance number, no identification papers to give us admission
to many social institutions. Documents link geography, history, and per-
sonal identity to a name. Without these, we become persona non grata,
a being on the fringes of society.
Our name is that passport which records our internal private world,
a world that does not always mirror the intent with which the name was
given. A secret world in which we dream, argue, make love, whisper,
and shout; the dit-mansion (Lacans play on words, house of the said)
of our being, a space of familiarity and shelter. We consider this meta-
phorical home a sphere of intimacy, shaped by our unique experiences
and memories. It houses our memories and souvenirs, our illusions and
fantasies, our certainties and our misgivings. The French philosopher
Gaston Bachelard describes the characteristics of our first childhood
home in his book The Poetics of Space as our first universe, a real
cosmos in every sense of the word . . . All really inhabited space bears
the notion of home. 1 And like the permanent imprint of this first
universe, our name resounds within us throughout our life.Unlike the
color of our hair or the freckles and beauty spots that may dot our
skincourtesy of the genetic coding of our physical being that marks
each of us as uniqueour name is an invitation into our being. Naming
is not a random act. Names are not chosen and assigned indiscriminate-
ly. In many cultures a sacredness surrounds not only naming rituals but
also the names themselves, which are endowed with an inviolability that
marks their wearers from its first utterance.
Our proper names mark our entry into life; given name and surname
are the symbolic talismans by which our unique life story begins. They
inevitably return us to a question of origins. Yet childhood amnesia
makes us strangers to our own beginnings. We accept without question
the stories we have been told about our first stirrings and early days.
Their mythic origin is told, repeated, and inscribed in our memory; it
forms the foundation of our lifes narrative. As the Egyptian-born poet
Edmond Jabs writes, Beginning is a human invention, an anguished
speculation about origins. Animalslike plantsdo not even have an
inkling of it. 2
AN I N V I T AT I ON I N T O B E ING 5
***
The day I was born, winds howled across the Montreal sidewalks, as
snowblowers, churning their way up and down the streets, spewed piles
of fresh snow onto front yards. According to my mother, my birth was
premature by a few days. At the first sign of contractions, she called my
father, who returned from work as quickly as he could. Anxious to get
my mother to the hospital, he steered his way around snowdrifts and
parked cars, speeding down the hill to the Herbert Reddy Hospital.
Slow down, my mother implored, but he maintained his speed all
the way to the emergency entrance. The obstetrician, a forty-year-old
bachelor still living at home with his mother, warned my father not to
leave.
Mr. Himes, this one is going to be fast.
Apparently, this handsome bachelor, the target of much gossip and
womens glances, had also delivered my sister, whose delivery had been
slow and laborious. You just shot out, my mother frequently told me
over the years. You were just anxious to get going. Right from day one.
Always impatient, just like the way you are today.
She also told me that the obstetrician married a staff nurse shortly
following my birthand just a few weeks after his mothers death. She
always concluded her story with, The women were lined up, but some-
how he wouldnt marry until his mother died.
In my mind, my birth was linked to the fate of this doctor whose
dependency on his mother interfered with his maturity.
When I was a little girl, my mother often read to me before my
bedtime. Most of the stories began the same way. I would immediately
be drawn into another world . . . a world of bygone times, perhaps an
imaginary world, a crepuscular, shadowy world between light and dark-
ness. I would nod off to sleep, transported by images of a beyond, a
world populated by figures and caricatures dancing in my head as my
mothers voice lulled me into the Land of Nod. In a time long and
faraway in the past . . . There was and there was not . . . A very, very,
long time ago . . . In the oldest of days and ages and times . . . Long
before your time . . .
***
And so each of our own stories begins: Once upon a time . . . We are
a new entry on the stage of life. A birth, a breath, a cry of being. A mass
6 CHA P TER 1
of physiological, neuroanatomical, and biochemical cells and neurons

wrapped in a blanket of human skin.
Tumbling out of the birth canal and tossed into this world, the new-
born lands into the hands of those who have preceded him. In time, he
will be molded and shaped by those adults, themselves imperfect, inse-
cure, anxious. They will caress, feed, nourish, fondle, and sustain him.
In moments of frustration and suffering, they will bundle him up too
tightly, smother him, elude him. At the mercy of their moments of
triumph and sorrow, he will bend to their demands, forever trying to
carve out the shape of their desire, their wants, their hopes. Amidst the
lallation, the cooing and babbling and the earliest vocalizations between
infant and mother, the as-yet-not-completely-formed infant will be
bathed in the love of his parents. Having been given a name and having
responded positively to its demand to come alive, he will begin to rec-
ognize the repetition of this word in these earliest interactions. In the
intimate embrace of his parents, his name will be utteredin a whisper
or a murmur, a clamor, or a shout. Nestled against the breast, he will
derive pleasure and comfort from the repetition of this word that makes
of its sound a familiar rhythm. Within the shelter of this intimate bond,
this sounding of his name, his being will be informed.
The first sounds the infant hears come from the soul of the mothers
beingwhispers and lullabies, words of endearmentin a voice punc-
tuated by intonations and modulations in rhythm, pace and timbre, and
cadence. A voice that later will be recognized by its familiarity, its
sweetness, its exclamations and expletives. Perhaps a voice that pulls
with seductiveness or pushes with forlornness. This first language of
private communication constitutes a preliminary code between mother
and child that does not enter the universe of shared speech and lan-
guage. The vocal apparatus is flexed with the oral pleasure of producing
sounds. The voice will begin to shape itself into letters, repeated pho-
nemes of sound that gradually take on meaning by their consistency and
repetition. For example, the universal forms of mama and papa
constitute the beginnings of a common code of symbols in languages
around the globe, yet in the early months these phonemes also partake
in the pleasure of sound play.
Soon the infant will scan the musical notes of his mothers voice.
These sounds will no longer be only a source of comfort, or of empti-
ness, but also of information and signification. And very quickly, he will
recognize those particular and distinctive sounds that form smoothly

into a regular sequence. The labels that he hears and to which he
responds become repetitive language patterns. And with increasing fa-
miliarity, he hears his own name as a melody of sweetness, or at times
bitterness, to which he orients himself without hesitation. Conversely,
the infant will also discover the power of his own sound. Within weeks,
he will begin to recognize the impact of his own voice, his own cries, on
the person who hears the cries as a call. The mother, interpreting the
sounds of her infant as a demand for food, for comfort, for warmth,
responds in haste, in panic, or in time, gradually attributing particular
meanings to her babys sounds.
In this way, our little newborn will become a speaking being, a
parltre, who will enter the world of desire and determination, drive
and enthusiasm. His life will be honored and commemorated, lived
with his named presence, until its end.
***
But even before any of this, the infant will be called into existence
with a name, his birth followed by an act of nomination. This act of
naming is a summoning, an awakening of the human infant into being.
The little darling, the one whose life has just been revealed, must be
called into being, and it is with his name that he will be summoned to
respond. With joy and glee, with tears and howls, with an upturned
smile or a downturned scowl, with legs circling the air or with fists
pounding, respond he must. And like Gods calling to Abraham at the
beginning of the story of his near-sacrifice of his son Isaac and Abra-
hams response, Hineini (Here I am), so too the newborn responds
symbolically: I am here. I hear you. Yes, that is me.
The birth name animates us, creates us, and demands of us a certain
responsibility. We are each of us invited to take a name, to infuse our
name with lan and vigor, to bring our name into circulation with vital-
ity, to make our name come alive with our own life-affirming energy.
Unfortunately, there are instances where a name is not taken, when
it is not permeated with spirit or passion. Either by a deliberate or
unconscious act of refusal or by a significant impairment, the call is
unheard, unheeded, avoided, or foreclosed, and there is no replyfor
example, in the extreme cases of autism, of disrupted development or
genetic anomalies, or in the nascent structure of a psychosis. In these
cases, a rupture occurs in the shared use of language. Or consider the
8 CHA P TER 1
child born after the death of a sibling in which the bereaved parents
choose to give this child the same name as the deceased one. Exposed
to the weight of grieving parents and the unconscious wish on the part
of parents to fulfill the hole left absent by the child, the replacement
child cannot accept the given name without serious limitations, and
may withdraw into mental illness.
Research on how language is acquired describes how parents use the
given name as a means of calling. With a modulated, high-pitched voice
pattern, they call: You, Barbara! My sweetheart! Pay attention. Barba-
ra! Look! Here! You come and see Mummy! First the exclamations and
then the name uttered to catch the attention of the busy baby: Sally,
Bob, Barbara, Michaelstop what you are doing, I am calling you, I
want your attention. Look at me, look at Mummy. And then the re-
sponse: the turning and looking, the verbal and nonverbal replies, the
chuckles and vocalizations.
As we grow, we will follow the pattern of this first call, this appeal
from the external world. The call by name puts each of us in a position
to respond definitively. Consider an example from everyday experience.
To know someone, to use their name, is to stand in relation to that
person, to call in such a way that the other person must respond. Even
in a casual encounter, when we address someone by their name, we are
asking for a response:
Alice! [I am calling you.] Yes? [I am listening, I am here.]

Please put your shoes away (or do such-and-such). [a request]
Okay. [a response]
Or consider the times when we use someones name in anger or

frustration, as if the use of the name exerts an additional force or will
grab more attention. Parents often assert their power and control by
calling their children by name:
Come to dinner now, please. [no response]

Johnny, I said come to dinner right now. [response]
As adults, we continue to be called on to respond in various situa-

tions. We do not always do so: We may refuse to go to school, to enlist
in the army, to take a test. We may not answer the phone or the door,
denying our response to a social convention or demand. We can choose
to avoid the stack of bills piling up in the mailbox or consumer surveys.

There are innumerable opportunities to avoid responding to the call of
our name.
Once a name is assumed at birth, it becomes a part of us, interwoven
with the fabric of our innermost being. Why do we sometimes feel
uncomfortable when we are speaking to someone we do not know very
well or whom we have just meta car salesman comes to mindand
that person begins to use our first name? Why do we cringe when our
first name is used repeatedly in a conversation? Because the speaker is
assuming the existence of a relationship that in fact is either lacking or
absent altogether. Susan, you know that when I met you, I was re-
minded of another friend of mine. And Susan, this person looked just
like you . . . The discomfort of a transgression, a line crossed without
permission. To use someones first name in casual conversation is to
assume a particular relationship to that person. We do not enter such
intimacy without implicit permission, nor are we always prepared to
grant this privilege to others. Sometimes, the familiar use of our name
becomes a trespassing of boundaries.
By contrast, the tenderness with which we call each other through a
private code or through terms of endearment expressed only in private
moments attests to the way in which names become infused with a
libidinal charge and a certain jouissance, or sensual pleasure. Each of us
can probably remember or continue to experience being embraced and
called by a name unique to a particular love relationship. In the most
intimate of moments, we sense the eroticism of the name, of the name
saturated with a life-filled energy. These names of affection invite a
reciprocity of offering and receiving; at these special moments, we ex-
perience the intimacy and sexual desire with which our name can be-
come imbued.
A given name is never random. It trickles down through the uncon-
scious of the name-givers. While life and birth circumstances, moral
qualities, physical characteristics, and simple preference (we just liked
the sound of it) may contribute to the choice of a given name, it is rarely
that neutral in its selection. Sometimes the latent meaning can be dis-
cerned if parents are pressed or asked directly. However, even in cases
where parents insist on its neutrality, behind the so-called neutral name
hide the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of each set of parents.
10 CHA P TER 1
Fashioned after a movie star, named after a prophet, forged in the

memory of an aunt, an uncle, or a lost child, the newborn is endowed
with the fantasies and desires of those whose name he receives. And
having received this nomination, he will be created out of what he has
been given.
***
It is almost inconceivable for us to imagine not having a name, for to
be without a name is to be without form or qualities, without shadows,
without dreams, without imagination, without a soul. And worse, with-
out a home.
To live without a name would be to live on the margins of life. It
would be to belong to the kingdom of animals that roam through their
world nameless and anonymous (with the exception of domesticated
pets, which we name as surrogate members of our family).
To remain without a name is to live on the periphery of life without
access to others, for our name links us to a community of speaking
beings, each of whom also bears a name. As the king of the Phoenicians
says to Ulysses, Tell me the name you go by at homewhat your
mother and father and country men call you. For no one in the world is
nameless, however mean or noble, since parents give names to all chil-
dren they have. 3 To endure in a nameless condition would be to sur-
vive life as inhuman, not-yet-human, or subhuman. When we stop using
the names of individuals, they become the anonymous, faceless mass of
men and women. When we want to disconnect or when we want to
objectify, we eliminate the individual by referring to a trait or quality:
the boy, the slave, the mother, the ugly one, the one with the
dark skin; or to the plural: those skinheads, the slanted eyes, the
rednecks, the blacks, the Jews. Similarly when we want to classify
people, we refer to the collective: the gypsies, those Romans, the
Serbs, the infidels. We create distance by collapsing singularity into
an indeterminate horde.
In 1938, at the time of Kristallnacht, Jews were stripped of their
actual names when Hitler instituted law #174 whereby Jews were
forced to assume a name considered Jewish from a published list of
names. As part of this decree, all Jewish men were to assume the mid-
dle name Israel and all women the middle name Sarah. Thus Hitler first
robbed the Jewish people of their individual identities by eliminating
their actual names and limiting their unique trait of identification to a
generic status. Then he stripped his victims even more by branding

them with numbers, further robbing them of any semblance of human-
ity. The obliteration of names was an intentional weapon to reduce a
segment of humankind to the nonhuman.
A recent news article reported on frightening incidents of abuse
carried on in a residential center for the developmentally disabled in
southern Ontario. To add to the horrific practices of the institution, now
facing charges for the alleged abuse of its residents, was the burial
practice of children who had died while in its care. In a TV news clip,
the camera rolls slowly over the marked graves of the cemetery, a pano-
ramic view of rows and rows of gravestonesnumbered and nameless.
The state of namelessness produces a sense of mental confusion and
disarray; the nameless remain anonymous social pariahs. In medieval
and romantic literature, the creation of characters without names rein-
forced a feeling of mistrust and suspicion bordering on contempt.
Whether in fiction or in reality, it is always more reassuring to know
with whom you are dealing than with an unnamed figure.
To be named is to occupy the spirit of ones identity, no matter who
ones parents and grandparents may be and no matter how ones life
will unfold. And to inhabit ones name is to enter the shared universe of
discourse and activity with other speaking beings.
2
NAMES WITH POWER
The name written on my birth certificate is Mavis Carole Himes. This

is my English name, the name with which I greet the world, and the
name by which I am acknowledged in return. In my opinion, an unex-
citing name. An unusual name, perhaps, but one that announces noth-
ing about the person it represents. My name does not carry the weighti-
ness of Angustias (anguish), Magdalena (the saintly Mary), Amelia
(industriousness), Martirio (martyrdom), or Adela (a going forward),
the five daughters in Federico Garcia Lorcas House of Benarda Alba,
nor the lightness of a name like Joyce or Gloria.
My first name, Mavis, is defined in the dictionary as song-thrush,
the bird Turdus musicus, a word of Middle English origin. My surname,
Himes, is also brief and diminutive. It gives nothing away; it shields me
from my ancestral history, unlike such family names as OLeary or
McInerney, Rostropov or Katchachurian, which announce their ethnic
origins.
Had I been born prior to the Edict of Napoleon I in the eighteenth
century, I would have been named Mavis, daughter of Louis and Miri-
am, for that was a time when family names were not required by law
and offspring were identified by the names of their parents alone. Or,
had I been born at an even earlier time, I might have been named
simply Mavis, daughter of Louis the tailor.
In Judaism, an infant is given both a Hebrew and a Christian, or
secular, name. Frequently this secular name bears a resemblance to the
Hebrew name by sharing the same initial letter (Leon/Lavan), by being
13
14 CHA P TER 2
a translation from Hebrew to English (Shoshana/Rose), or by bearing a

resemblance in both languages (Dvorah/Deborah). The Hebrew name
may be retained as a middle name in honor of a deceased relative, like
my sister whose middle name, Ann (Chaya), commemorates our pater-
nal grandmother. While the secular name is for everyday use, the He-
brew name is reserved for all festivities and rituals associated with the
Jewish community: It is the one used for a call to the Torah in syn-
agogue, for recording in a marriage certificate (ketubah), and for com-
memoration on a tombstone. It is usually kept separate from its secular
counterpart.
My Hebrew name is Malkah, or Malkah bat Leib vMiriam in full, as
Jews are still defined in relation to their parents given Hebrew names.
Considered an old-fashioned name in Israeli circles today, Malkah
means queen in English. My parents tell me I carry a regal name!
As a young girl, I learned that I had been named after my great-aunt,
my maternal grandmothers sister, who had died tragically in a car acci-
dent. I learned only later, as a teenager, that this particular sister had
been considered the wicked one who had match-made my grand-
mother in order to get her out of the marital home. I carry a tarnished
regal name!
My family name, Himes, is an abbreviation of the patronymic of my
paternal grandfather, Morris Heimovitch. Haimovitch, Haimowitz,
Hajmowicz, Chaimovitch, Haimevici, Chajmoviczall variations on
this name as influenced by geographical location and local pronuncia-
tion (i.e., Russian, Polish, Ukrainian). The Hebrew word chaim express-
es the essence of life. It first appears in the Bible when God creates
man out of dust and breathes nishmat chaim, the breath of life, into
his nostrils (Gen. 2:7). Jews frequently add a suffix or prefix to their
fathers name to indicate son of or descendant of; these vary in
different languages and countries: Wolfson, Rubenovitch, Markowitz,
ben-Yehuda, or ibn-Gvirol. Through my fathers patronymic, I cherish
the vitality of life and incorporate its life-affirming energy. In the Mid-
dle Ages, it was not uncommon for Ashkenazi Jews to add chaim to a
given name in the event of sickness or danger in order to ensure long
life and health.
***
My fathers full name was Louis Frank Heimovitch. He was one of
seven brothers and two sisters all carrying the surname Heimovitch. As
N AM E S WI T H POWE R 15
my father and uncles entered the world of business during the 1940s in
Anglophone Montreal, they decided to drop some letters and abbrevi-
ate their name to Himes. Why did they drop these letters? What was
the significance of this name change for them? And what is the signifi-
cance of this name change for me and my ties to an abbreviated, mis-
shapen name?
Perhaps, like many Jews around the world, my father and uncles did
not wish to announce their ethnic identity in a city with residues of anti-
Semitism; Himes conceals whereas Heimovitch reveals. Perhaps it was
also a pragmatic, financial decision; perhaps they thought the new name
would be less troublesome and more profitable for business purposes.
Perhaps they wished to appear more assimilated. Perhaps they wanted
to separate themselves from those other Jews, those strange-looking
men with anemic complexions and long sideburns who scurried about
Friday afternoons in their black top hats and long, black topcoats to get
home before Sabbath began, at sunset, in Outremont, a neighborhood
whose name means beyond the mountain, originally beyond the
mountain from the main settlement of Montreal. This neighborhood,
once characterized by a cultural mosaic of struggling ultra-orthodox
Jews, established and wealthy Francophones such as the Trudeaus, and
a mixed Anglophone population, to this day is a thriving hub of mixed
ethnic identities. The Heimovitch boys from Grubert Lane may have
imagined that, as the Himes brothers, they could blend more easily
among those who strolled along Sherbrooke and Dorchester, the major
arteries of the largely Anglophone downtown, or up and down the aisles
of the James A. Ogilvy store, a bastion of the English establishment with
its tartan boxes, its grand chandelier brought from Her Majestys Thea-
tre a few blocks away, and the piper whose music filled the store.
Whatever the motivation, the name change stuck and would be trans-
mitted to all the offspring of my generation and on.
I have often wondered: Did the brothers all agree? Was there a
vote? Did they argue? Was it a hasty decision or one discussed over a
period of time? I never asked my father those questions. My interest in
names surfaced after his death, and today there are no surviving siblings
of his generation.
Seven Heimovitch boysthey of the scrawny legs and torn leggings,
mismatched socks, and unlaced shoesmust have filled a row of their
own through spring, summer, fall, and winter, as they turned the crum-
16 CHA P TER 2
pled pages of the prayer book, or mahzor. Was it on the way from this
place of worship, prayer books tucked high under their armpits, that the
seeds of change were strewnseeds of hatred tossed about in the teas-
ing and taunting of name-calling by the French Canadian gamins fo-
menting and echoing the hate-filled refrain from thousands of miles
across the ocean? We and they and we and they and we and they and
we and they? Jews and Arabs and Jews and Poles and Jews and Cos-
sacks and Jews and Germans and Jews and the French, the Qubcois,
the Francophones?
Was it only in a self-imposed exile that the chorus could be changed?
Was it on the homeward return from that holiest of brick buildings that
a new name was forced into creation, forged from the rocks that landed
on the pavement? A new, abbreviated name in a new country: Himes.
So my full name is Mavis Carole Himes. English on the outside, Jewish
on the inside. Or is my name Malkah Heimovitch? A foreign name, an
unfamiliar name, a name that announces its strangeness and ethnicity.
My Anglicized name, an amputation from the original, is a name in
exile, a name that has been lifted, removed from the soil, and trans-
planted to live or die.
I am the rightful inheritor of this abbreviated surname. As a Himes,
I am the product of a union between my father and mother, and, as the
custom in this country, I choose to carry the inscription of my paternal
surname, in spite of my marital status. And yet this name, modified by
my father and his brothers, conceals my true identity. For it erases all
ethnic markings and removes all traces of my cultural roots. It hides the
intergenerational chain that binds me to a wandering tribe of nomads in
the Land of Ur over five thousand years ago.
When people meet me, they often question the derivation of my
name. They are never sure of my background. I have been told that
Mavis is an English name, frequently employed for servants and maids;
I have been told that Mavis is the name of African Americans in the
southern United States; I have been told that my name is old-fashioned,
outdated, and idiosyncratic.
***
The ancient worlds of the Ancestors danced and sang with the exul-
tation of naming. A new life, a new personality, a new destiny. A birth, a
name, a celebration of naming. The close connection between a per-
sons essence and his being was infused with the force and intensity of
permanence encapsulated through the letters of a name. Over and over

again, the Ancestors insisted that we remain true to the essentialism of
our name, this moveable home we carry wherever we roam. They also
understood that to name was to bring something into existence. They
too believed that to name was to put into real circulation the stuff of
life, the scenes and acts of the lived experience.
In this timeless worldview, the process of naming was not only a
summoning into existence, but also a calling from and by an-Other; not
to possess a name was tantamount to nonexistence. Name-giving was
always and necessarily a calling forth of a force associated with creation
and domination.
The history of man as name-giver goes back to time immemorial.
And with the power to name came a belief in the power of names
themselves. Not only was power invested in the person bestowing the
name, but a certain power and magic was also believed to reside in the
name itself. To know someones name could also be to have access to a
secret knowledge about that person.
As was believed in many cultures, to know a persons name was to
gain an intimate knowledge of their being, the secrecy of their inner-
most thoughts and desires. For example, Egyptian mythology believed
in the existence of a supradivine force, principle, law, or essence, re-
ferred to as maat, which means truth or justice. By partaking of this
essence, a human magician could acquire power over men and gods.
Accordingly, the great secret of the gods was said to reside in their
name.
Treacherous Isis, a mortal, aspired to become a goddess by laying
hold of the sacred name of Ra. When the great god Ra was old and
almost dead from a poisonous snakebite, Isis approached him, offering
him her aid. In delirium, he recounted the story of his life, revealing a
parents prohibition of revealing his name. Slippery Isis agreed to help
him survive, but only on the condition that he reveal this name. In
desperation, Ra consented. His name was taken away from him, and Isis
became the great goddess, the queen of gods, who knew Ra by his own
name. 1
In the holy books of Judaism, it is written that the name by which a
person is called constitutes that persons soul and vital force. When a
soul inhabits a body, it draws life into it by means of its name; that is, by
the correct joining and enunciation of its letters. The Hebrew name by
18 CHA P TER 2
which all things are called constitutes the literal speech of the Ten
Sayings by which the world was created. It is believed that each person
embodies this life force through the manipulation and formation of
letters. According to one tractate in the mystical writings of a Chassidic
text (Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah), the name is the vessel that con-
tains the vital force inherent in the letters of the name. The letters of
the name are a channel through which life is drawn into the body. Even
the word shem (name) has the same numerical value as the word tzinor
(pipe). If someone faints, he will be called by his Hebrew name in order
to arouse the life force at its source.
Jewish tradition has always insisted on the power of the name. Jew-
ish law forbids man to utter the name of God, the ultimate One, the
supreme master, for man is prohibited to enter the essence of the
Divine. As incontrovertible evidence for this commandment, orthodox
Jews turn to the biblical episode in which Moses asked God to reveal his
name so the children of Israel might know whose authority their leader
was following. In the account, God refuses Moses, instead giving only
an indication of his power: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, I-Am-Who-I-Am, or,
according to other interpreters, I-Am-Who-Brings-into-Being or even
I Will Be What I Will Be (Exod. 3:1314). The condensed form of
this name, the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, can only be read by its re-
placement Adonai (Lord), Elohim (God), or HaShem (the Name). The
ineffable name of God must be protected and preserved and is thereby
condensed into writing that can only be read in the unending repetition
of an unsayable sound.
Just as the Egyptians knew that the essence of the gods resided in
the secret power of their name, so the Jews believed that to know the
name of God was to assume an intimate knowledge prohibited to man.
Man can never presume to know what is reserved for God. To know a
name was to have access to a suprahuman power that could result in
danger or death. It is also interesting to note that the Hebrew word for
to know or knowledge is also a euphemism for sexual knowledge,
suggesting a further taboo associated with the name. To know intimate-
ly is to enter into the realm of lifes mysteriesthe sacred and the
taboo, the holy and the profane.
Kabbalistic (or Jewish mystical) thought brings us closer to certain
anthropomorphic conceptions and primitive beliefs that we associate
with the Ancients. Not only was it believed that each person was named
in accordance with his origin or destiny, but it also was accepted that
certain unforeseen events could control mans fate.
We can see this in relation to the practice of name-changing that was
common in the Middle Ages. A person who was dangerously sick might
be advised to change his name in the hope that the angel of death, who
was said to summon people by their name, would be confused. This
custom, known as meshanneh shem (to give a person additional names
at any time in his life), became widespread among Ashkenazi Jews.
Some names could be temporary and might last until a time of mar-
riage, while others might stick for life. It was also advised that Jews of
the same name should not live in the same town or permit their chil-
dren to marry into one anothers families. Men were urged not to marry
a woman of the same name as their mother, or the woman was required
to change her name, lest the fate of the two women become inter-
twined. In Russia, as late as the twentieth century, it was considered
unlucky for a father-in-law to have the same name as the bridegroom.
A certain leaning toward superstitious beliefs and a naive, perhaps
irrational, respect for the unseen and the unknowable clings to the
history of my ancestors and my ancestors ancestors. Superstitious be-
liefs have trickled down into current traditions. Today, in East Euro-
pean Jewry, when several people have died in a family, a newborn child
is named after one of them, a name that is never uttered so as not to
give the spirit any opportunity to harm the child. Instead, a nickname is
used: little one or old one. The custom of naming a child after a
deceased relative is similarly based on a belief that to name a child after
a living person might confuse the angel of death, who might mistake the
child for the adult and thereby take the wrong person. And to adopt the
name of a living relative may also rob the adult of their own unique
soul.
Jewish tradition also holds that God inscribes each persons destiny
in his record by name. If a person is so critically ill that there is no hope
for him or her, a ritual called shinui hashem (name change) is per-
formed. A copy of the Holy Scripture is opened at random, and the first
name that appears is given to the dying person to replace the old name.
If God had determined that person A should die, then his decree
need not affect the person now called B. A change of name, a change
of fate.
20 CHA P TER 2
In both Muslim and Jewish traditions, a person experiencing a trage-

dy in life may ask a religious leader in the community to change their
given name: Their name has become too powerful and cursed; there-
fore, it must be changed.
I met a man recently who introduced himself as Kirk Rothstein.
Noting the incongruity of an English-sounding first name and a Jewish-
sounding family name, I asked him about it, explaining my interest in
the topic. His explanation was overshadowed by a throwaway comment
as he walked away: But I have another name, a secret name. When I
was young, I was extremely sick and the doctors were not convinced
that I would survive, so the rabbi gave my parents, who had always
remained secular Jews, another name for me, which to this day I do not
know. It was given to confuse the angel of death, and I guess it worked!
And in a passage from the book Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, one of
my favorite Canadian writers, I read:
He was enjoying the mans company, as well as the womans singing

in the mornings. Which had come first, he asked, her name, which
was Aria, or her pleasure in singing? Who knows, the husband said,
shes Romani, they have so many names. The secret name, which is
never used but is her true name, which only her mother knows, thats
hidden to confuse supernatural spiritsit keeps the true identity of
the child from them. And the second name, which is a Roma name,
is usually used only by them. And that one is Aria. 2
***
The fact that a persons name was imbued with powerful significance
and contained within it a force essential to ones personality had many
implications, including evil ones. During the Rabbinic period of Baby-
lonian Jewry (70500 CE), demonology pervaded the thoughts of most
men and women. This was a time when gods, angels, demons, and
spirits hovered and interfered, populating the minds and beliefs of the
living. While some demons were beneficent and helpful, others were
mischievous and malevolent: They inhabited the air and the trees, flew
through the skies, and perched atop houses, frequently hiding in cor-
ners and outhouses. No wonder these supernatural beings needed to be
appeased. They could wreak havoc on daily life, creating minor mishaps
and major catastrophes.
Both Gentiles and Jews wanted to be spared the fate of demons,

wishing to exorcise ghosts and, especially, to preserve the happiness of
their marital life. Both groups believed demons had a particularly ill
effect on these matters, and both looked forward to a salvation consist-
ing of good health, sexual satisfaction, and a normal daily life unmarred
by inexplicable accidents or bad luck. At that time, no one seems to
have enjoyed an abundance of such blessings. Magical incantations pat-
terned after human models of obligation were used in the rituals to
counteract these troublesome demons, forcing them to swear vows and
oaths and perform the bidding of man.
The Jews, surrounded by the cultural climate of the Persians, whose
belief in demons was widespread, were known to have defended them-
selves against threats from the world of the demonic not only with
incantations but also with amulets and prayers, the study of Torah, and
an adherence to their faiths commandments. It was believed that de-
mons, not the deities or God, implemented curses activated by peoples
abused vows or oaths, and that, when a person swore an oath or when a
magician conjured up a hostile vow, the demon himself had simultane-
ously undertaken an oath to carry out the curses. Rabbis, while remain-
ing the religious leaders of their community, were expected to settle
disputes and perform judicial duties. It was believed that, by virtue of
their knowledge of the Torah and divine names, these lawyer-magi-
cians 3 could work miracles, interpret dreams, exorcise demons, com-
pose healing incantations, and manufacture amulets.
It is the rich interplay of culture and sacred writings that influenced
the Jews in their conception of and use of namesand thereby influ-
enced naming conventions in the West.
3
GO OUT AND NAME
People of the Book, thats what we are called, my father often told
me when I was growing up. There is a reason for that, Mavis. The book
is our most precious commodity. You can take away our land and our
possessions, you can exile us and scatter us in the four directions of the
wind, you can transplant us wherever you will, you can strip us of our
names, but there is one thing you absolutely cannot doyou cannot
take away our knowledge and our laws. To be a Jew is to belong to the
world of this text and these writings: the Book of Books. This is our
inheritance.
People of the Bookthe book carried by the Jewish people, the
book memorized in their souls, the book written into their flesh. The
book with words that promise survival and longevity. A book written in
Hebrew and Aramaic, an ancient tongue no longer spoken. These
words embrace and contain the essence of a people used to living in a
state of perpetual exile.
The Torah scrolls, the words of the Unnamable One, are dressed in
velvet, adorned with filaments of gold embroidery. They dwell in the
sanctuary of the ark, the aron kodesh. Another dit-mansion of words, a
dwelling place of the said/spoken; another bayit (house), bayit shel
millim (a house of words).
***
This is the line of descendants from which I trace my roots. My
name, Mavis, daughter of Louis and Miriam (Malkah bat Leib
vMiriam), follows a thread, a filament that binds me to this tribe of
23
24 CHA P TER 3
men and women wandering in the desert. My lineage flows from the
Ancients: Hebrews, Maccabees, Pharisees. No pure evidence supports
a direct lineal descent from the historic Abraham, son of Terah of the
rediscovered Ur of Sumeria, although many scholars have attempted to
argue this claim.
For example, Dr. Neil Rosenstein, a noted genealogist and author of
The Lurie Legacy, attempts to demonstrate historically that the Lurie
lineage, which includes such luminaries as Sigmund Freud and Martin
Buber, the eleventh-century sage Rashi, and many other revered Jewish
scholars from Hillel to Hezekiah, extends to King David of the tenth
century BCE. In fact, Rosenstein conjectures that this oldest-known
living family, which reads like a celebrity column of prominent histori-
cal and contemporary figures (the Prophet Isaiah, Karl Marx, the violin-
ist Yehudi Menuhin, and even the Rothschilds), would possibly connect
most Ashkenazi Jews. My scepticism about such matters predominates.
I would prefer to say that the bond of a common origin based on soil, if
not blood, unites me with fifteen million other people who call them-
selves Jews.
Twenty years ago, my first readings of the psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan forced me to consider the enigma of my own beginnings and the
traces of my own ancestral roots. In my first personal psychoanalysis in
the 1970s (a process required in the formation of an analyst), religion
was not a topic for interpretation. An implicit taboo on religion and
politics within analysis at that time, combined with my age and stage of
life, made the immediacy of my issues take precedence over what ap-
peared inconsequential.
In my second analysis, during the 1990s, these matters emerged as
an opening, another point of entry into my past, but one I was not ready
to traverse. But during my third analysis, I chose to open that door and
enter this unfamiliar terrain. It was not religious theology or nationalist
idealism that announced itself in that opening, but a connection to my
Jewish heritage. And it was through the missing letters of my name that
I sought out what my ancestry and my own hidden inheritance, repre-
sented by my name, meant to me.
Being Jewish, I came to see more clearly, is about believing in a
world that is consequential and in which all events are infused with
meaning. Religion, after all, is about the inner world, a spiritual sense of
peace and gratitude for the world around us. The outward signs of a
GO OU T AN D N AM E 25
traditionally Jewish lifethe close observance of Shabbat, regular syn-

agogue attendance, community prayermight be signs of religiousness,
but then again, might not. Keva, the letter of the law, must be balanced
with kavannah, the intent, the spirit of the practice. To follow most of
the commandments of Judaism mechanically for the sake of a required
practice without soul and commitment is considered worse than the
honest and meaningful establishment of a limited number of practices.
Moving ones lips in synagogue so that others may see a devotion to
prayer holds less value than the prayer of one who struggles and ques-
tions the meaning of prayer.
Being Jewish is also about maintaining a link to a community of
wanderers and nomads, tracing ones genealogy to a descendant of one
of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It demands an unwavering connection to
a chain of historical events that span over five thousand years. The
narrative begins in the valley of Ur in Mesopotamia with the birth of a
family: the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the matriarchs, Sa-
rah, Leah, Rachel, and Rebecca; and all of their descendants. And it
continues with the birth of a nation, the children of Israel, led by their
devoted leader, Moses, out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised
land.
Being Jewish means struggling under the weight of this history, both
symbolic and real. It demands an accounting of this history whose more
recent past in the twentieth century has been filled with horror and
genocide, racism and prejudice. A struggle fraught with uncertainty,
loneliness, ambiguity, and a concern for survival that is repeated not
only through each generation, but within each member of its commu-
nity. And it acknowledges its instrument of transmission as the family
unit, with all of its blemishes and foibles, for, as Rabbi Hartman, the
Jewish scholar, reminds us, without parents, there is no Abraham, no
covenant, and no Sinai. While my inheritance as a Jew placed me
squarely within this heritage, one that was embraced by my parents and
grandparents, I chose an alternative route to express my ethnic inheri-
tance: an academic pursuit of anthropology and philosophy, psychology
and psychoanalysis, a secular tradition of study and research.
If anything, I had shied away from any association with my ancestral
roots. My life, both professionally and personally, eschewed any obvious
affiliation as if the outward expression of Judaism had become unac-
ceptable to me. And yet, my ancestral home, the one I carried through
26 CHA P TER 3
my name, repeatedly brought me back. Immersion in my analytic stud-

ies further reinforced a distance from any religious roots. Instead, I
unabashedly viewed myself as standing in the great tradition of those
secular humanistsWalter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud
who were to put themselves positively on the fringe and then to use
their fringe position as a declared vantage point to look into the depths
of history and the psyche, 1 as the psychoanalyst David Meghnagi has
put it.
All of these writers were products of a process of cultural seculariza-
tion that had swept through the Jewish world from the late seventeenth
century, finding their precursor in the figure of Baruch Spinoza. In all
these cases, the position as outsider was turned around and used to
break through into novel and revolutionary ways of imagining life.
For Freud personally, the historical and mythical-symbolic dimen-
sions of Judaism were a source of struggle and conflict, as well as an
unconscious source of inspiration on his lifework of establishing psycho-
analysis as a science. And these influences were not lost on Lacan,
whose work is also interspersed with multiple biblical references.
***
But what of this journey of names? What do we know about the
history of naming?
Hereditary family names were established in much of Western Eu-
rope by the end of the sixteenth century, though in more remote areas,
pockets of resistance remained and archaic forms of names continued
to spread. Jews and gypsies, the nomadic and the landless, always lived
on the margins of Christian society. They had always been exempt from
the requirement of a fixed surname. As described above, the Jews tradi-
tionally used dual given names: a Hebrew religious name (shem ha-
kadosh, or sacred name) for family and communal usage and a non-
Jewish name (shem hakinuim, or secular name) by which they were
known in gentile milieus. The significance of the given name is well
ingrained in Judaism. Historically, the chosen given name connected a
Jew of any period with his forebears, his religion, his whole heritage and
the Bible, 2 as Feldbyum writes, resulting in a proliferation of names
chosen from the Bible.
Some biblical names, such as Samuel, Joshua, and Eliezer, contain
specific references to God, whereas others reflect birth circumstances
(Isaac, or he laughs/will laugh, a reference to Abraham being told he
would have a child by his wife Sarah, who was significantly past her
child-bearing years); commemorations of an event (Eliezer, or my God
has helped me); or family relationships (Benjamin or Batsheva, with
the prefix ben meaning son and bat meaning daughter).
Gradually, given names were replaced by post-biblical names of Se-
mitic origin, a few appellations of Greek origin, and modifications of
names reflecting the host culture. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century, Christian names began replacing Hebrew names: Arnold for
Aron and Leon for Leyb. The custom of naming children after de-
ceased relatives had already existed by the Middle Ages and has contin-
ued, either as the first or second name, over the centuries.
Until the emancipation of the Jews in the late eighteenth century,
most Jews used the traditional system of patronymics noted above in
terms of European names in generalthat is, the first name followed
by ben- (son of), bar- (son of, in Aramaic), or bat- (daughter of) and
then the fathers nameto indicate ancestry and birth history.
The period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries saw tre-
mendous changes in naming laws for Jews, with a cascading effect in
the various Eastern and Central European countries, as well as in Rus-
sia. Beginning with the decree Das Patent ber die Judennamen, issued
on July 23, 1787, by Franz Josef II, emperor of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, Jews living under his reign were required to acquire a sur-
name. Initially this decree stipulated that family names were to be
assigned from a list of German names; a prior decree had also limited
Jews of this region to choose personal names from a list of 123 male and
31 female names. In an attempt to easily identify the Jews from the rest
of the population, these names were mainly German forms of biblical
names, a small number of German Christian names, and a few Yiddish
appellations. Resistance to this legislation was led by middle-class Jews
in Prague who wanted to give German names to their children. In 1836
a new law permitted the choosing of any German name but prohibited
name changes. With the proclamation of a general civic rights law in
December 1867, all naming restrictions came to an end.
Only in the early nineteenth century, through the Napoleonic de-
cree of July 20, 1808, and with Napoleons victory marches through
Russia, Poland, and Germany, were Jews living in lands west of the
Rhine required by law to acquire surnames. Whether names were
adopted or imposed on this community is still unclear. A known exam-
28 CHA P TER 3
ple is the family history of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned Austrian

philosopher. Ludwigs great-great-grandfather Meyer Moses had a son
named Moses Maier (alternate spellings: Maier, Meyer) who became a
steward, or land agent, for the aristocratic Seyn-Wittgenstein family in
the county of Wittgenstein in Westphalia, Germany. Moses Maier,
Ludwigs great-grandfather, later married Brendel (alternate spellings:
Breindel or Bernadine) Simon and built up a large trading business. In
compliance with the Napoleonic decree, he took the name of Wittgen-
stein.
In Central and Eastern Europe, many patronymics were frozen into
second names with the addition of suffixes (Mendelson, Levinson, Sil-
verman). Surnames, bought from the state, emerged from a variety of
sources: from rabbinical surnames, toponyms (place names), occupa-
tions, and personal characteristics. Names were also foisted on others
by impatient and intimidating officials incapable of decoding difficult-
and foreign-sounding names. Those who were unable to pay for their
name were assigned names of an undesirable nature: Klutz (clumsy),
Billig (cheap), Beckmesser (knife beak), or Drek (shit).
Many Jewish surnames were German compounds. The first part was
sometimes based on nature, such as flora and fauna: Apfel (apple) and
Blum (flower); or metals: Silber (silver) and Kupfer (copper); or the
heavens: Licht (light) and Stern (star); or colors: Braun (brown) and
Schwartz (black). The second parts included topographical terms, such
as Berg (mountain), Feld (field), or Stein (stone); habitations, such as
Haus (house) and Heim (home); or words related to plants, such as
Baum (tree) or Zveig (branch). Variations of these patterns existed in
other Jewish communities in other parts of Europe as well.
The acquisition of certain surnames served the interests of the state
by presenting the Jews as an assimilated population. In many cases,
names sounded similar irrespective of religious affiliation. Names end-
ing in topographical and toponyms sometimes coincided with place
names in Central Europe and surnames of nobility who owned the
localities, such as Grunberg, Rosenberg, or Rosenthal.
At the end of the eighteenth century, with the various partitions of
Poland and a steady stream of anti-Jewish laws, Russia acquired a large
Jewish population. In 1791 czar Catherine II the Great established a
territory for Russian Jews to live. Created under pressure to rid Mos-
cow of the business competition of the Jews and its evil influence on the
Russian masses, the Pale of Settlement, as it was called, included the

territory of present-day Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belo-
russia. More than 90 percent of Russian Jews were forced to live in the
poor conditions of the Pale from 1835 to 1917. With the establishment
of the Pale, legislation was passed demanding Jews retain a hereditary
or assumed family name without change. To comply with state de-
mands, authorities within the communities quickly created special nam-
ing patterns. In the region of Belarus, one-third of names were created
by adding the suffix -in to female given names (Dvorkin, Malkin, Shi-
frin); in northern Ukraine, nearly half of the names ended in -man
(Silverman); and in many other places, names were based on place
names ending in -ski (Chepelevski, Albertinski).
In the French republic, a letter from an irritated bureaucrat to a
prefect prompted an imperial decree of July 1808 requiring all Jews to
adopt and declare a fixed first and second name. In the same year, the
French mayor of Metz, exasperated with trying to regulate the tat civil,
wrote: Nothing is more common . . . than to find a son bearing a
different surname from his father, a brother from a brother, and to
discover individuals having but one name decide to take another . . . But
this is nothing compared to the situation of women: at least half of them
do not know themselves what their real names are, and it is not possible
to establish that they really have second names. 3
And so, like dominoes falling, the same legislation regarding naming
was imposed by the governments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, as well
as those in Western Europe, as part of their regulation of their Jewish
population. However, in certain countries (e.g., France, Prussia), this
was accompanied by a degree of emancipation and forced moderniza-
tion.
***
The Bible provided Western civilization with a template for the act
of naming. As many thinkers and scholars have pointed out, human-
kinds naming mimics Gods act of creating. Made in the image of God,
man creates and names. In the first version of the creation story, found
in Genesis 1, the universe is called into being by the force and power of
words. God conceived the universe and all of its animate and inanimate
creatures by invoking a series of letters into which he blew life, fashion-
ing the design of life.
30 CHA P TER 3
Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim vet haaretz. In the begin-

ning, God created heaven and earth. Bold and lucid words. A calling
forth into existence. Through these acts of speech, life not only was
produced but also was sustained. The voice names and a world of life is
brought into existence. In the words of one Torah commentary, God
said: and the divine word shatters the primal cosmic silence and signals
the birth of a new cosmic order. 4 From the utterance Let there
be . . . , the universe was born.
In his founding acts, God calls forth light; then the sky; then dry
land, with its vegetation; then the luminaries; then the fish and fowl;
then the land creatures, including humankind, of whom it is said in
verse 27: And God created man in His image, in the image of God He
created him; male and female He created them. Man and woman
appear as the last creatures after all the other animals have appeared on
earth. Man and woman share in the bounty of the garden and its crea-
tures, as God commands them to be fruitful and multiply and rule over
the animals: Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and
rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that
creep on earth.
And in the second version of the creation story, found in Genesis 2,
God gives man the opportunity to name. One possible reading suggests
that because man had been created alone, God, all-knowing and consid-
erate father figure that he is, reevaluated his decision and recognized
that he had made a grave mistake. In order that man not be isolated and
lonely, he decided to assign man a helper. And so we read:
The Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone: I will make a
fitting helper for him. And the Lord God formed out of the earth all
the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the
man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called
each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave
names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild
beasts . . . (Gen. 2:1820)
Beginning with the naming of common objects (plants, animal,

stars), we move to the proper name that follows the birth of man: Adam
- Adamah - Adam. Man - Earth - Adam. And these words are the
rem(a)inder of mans connection to the dust of the earth from which he
was born.
The Bible further captures the significance of naming throughout its

text with multiple references to divine names, place names, and genera-
tional names. We only have to flip a few pages in Genesis to see the
repeated catalogues of names. For example, we have the genealogy of
Cain followed by the lines of his siblings:
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And then he
founded a city, and named the city after his son Enoch. To Enoch
was born Irad, and Irad begot Mehujahel, and Mehujael begot
Methusael, and Methusael begot Lamech. Lamech took to himself
two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other
was Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who dwell
in tents and amidst herds. And the name of his brother was Jubal; he
was the ancestor of all who play the lyre and pipe. As for Zillah, she
bore Tubal-cain, who forged all implements of copper and iron. And
the sister of Tubal-cain was Naameh. (Gen. 4:1722)
Or, in Genesis 10, after the flood and after the death of Noah 350
years later, we have what is referred to as the Table of Nations, a listing
of the genealogy of nations, long lines of descendants marching through
the pages of the textthe branching out of the world from Noahs three
sons:
These are the lines of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah:
sons were born to them after the Flood. The descendants of Japheth:
Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Mescech, and Tiras. The de-
scendants of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Ripath, and Togarmah. The descen-
dant of Javan: Elishah and Tarshish, the Kittim, and the Dodanim.
From these the maritime nations branched out. These are the de-
scendants of Japheth by their landseach with its languagetheir
clans and their nations. (Gen. 10:15)
And then there are the biblical names that mark the transition from
a polytheistic to a monotheistic universe. Names of the patriarchs and
matriarchs that recall the first families of a people roaming in the Land
of Ur: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.
Names revered and blessed, hallowed and honored.
And from the line of Isaac/Israel we recall the twelve tribes: Reuben,
Simeon, Levi, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun,
32 CHA P TER 3
Joseph, and Benjamin. And from Judah descends beloved King David,
son of Jesse. And from them, all of the descendants that follow.
In the New Testament, we find the following list:
And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them
twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter,
and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bar-
tholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alpha-
eus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of
James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6:13)
These universal names, the echoes of which are recounted in our

stories and passed on to our children and grandchildren and our grand-
childrens children, provide the backdrop against which Western civil-
ization developed. Timeless names. Names without end that wrap
themselves around us, entwine us with their power, their graven images
and their divination. Names that infiltrate our worlds of letters, of mu-
sic, and of visual representation. And following in the footsteps of God,
historical man repeats this pattern of naming, obeying this dictum and
casting his powers of nomination over a broad spectrum.
Man builds and names his buildings, his towers, his castles, and his
industrial complexes: the John P. Robarts Research Library (Toronto),
Parc Gell (Barcelona), the Eiffel Tower (Paris), the Dwight D. Eisen-
hower Memorial (Los Angeles), the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal (Toron-
to).
Man creates and names his sculptures, his paintings and sketches,
his symphonies and concertos, his ballets, and his books: Rodins Think-
er, Beethovens Fifth, Balanchines Pas de Deux.
Man discovers and names his sea passages and inlets, his expedi-
tions, and his islands: the Bering Strait, the Byng Inlet, the Franklin
Expedition. Man invents and names his innovations, his technological
advances, his diseases, his medicinal remedies and surgical develop-
ments: the Barr-Epstein virus, Tommy John surgery, the Salk vaccine,
Aspergers syndrome.
Of course, in terms of the Jews, it was not just their sacred scriptures
and the cultures around them that informed their naming practices; it
was also their constant journeys from place to place, sometimes chosen
by them, other times forced on them.
4
NAMES AND NOMADS
In the desert my dreams feature vast, open spaces, infinite stillness,

boundless horizons. Sand sliding between my toes and light filtering
through my closed eyes.
The sun burns my arms as I move through the desert heat. A trail of
nomads, mere specks on the earths surface. I stop and collapse, ex-
hausted. I force myself to get up and move on. Where am I going? For
what am I searching? All I know is that I am propelled by an insatiable
urge to keep moving, as if by my movement I will find what I am
seeking. Stillness thunders in my ears. Then the booming command:
Keep moving, do not stop . . . I awaken. I am in my bed.
The magnificent Sinai wilderness is the only desert I cherish.
Sinai, the birthplace of the three desert religions: Judaism, Chris-
tianity, and Islam. The birthplace of the founding myth of a culture of
Semitic peoples.
It was in this desert that the God of the Jews, the God of the Chris-
tians, and the God of the Muslimsa common Godrevealed himself.
In the shifting sands under the heat of the desert where human frailty
and human limitations were most exposed, God first appeared to Abra-
ham, the founding father of all three desert religions And it was in the
desert where the Torah was given, first orally and then inscribed in
tablets.
And it is here in Sinai that one group of Semitic people wandered for
forty years while Moses, their leader, ascended Mount Sinai to speak to
their God and receive the oral commandments. Angry, belligerent,
33
34 CHA P TER 4
truculent, frustrated, this small tribe refused the faith they had been
asked to keep. Instead they turned to the worship of a golden mammal,
the icon of a calf around which they danced and sang, refusing to
believe their leader or to acknowledge the power of an invisible god. A
band of men and women forced to explore, to endure, the mystery of
the desert. And when their leader descended carrying the words of the
Laws, which had been inscribed on stone tablets, he flung these on the
windswept sand, smashing the precious words. And the people of the
desert were given another chance to accept the word of their leader.
And after this second journey up the mountain did their hero return to
them, once again bearing the tablets with inscriptions of the Written
Law, the Ten Commandments.
If my name is the home in which I reside, then Sinai with its rich
history is my names ancestral landscape, the place where the letters of
those first words were inscribed. In this home sleep the ancestral mem-
ories of a forty-year trek through the desert, and the insinuation of my
Hebrew name returns me there.
We were a few miles from Dahab, a Bedouin village on the Gulf of
Aqaba, returning from an inland trip. The sun was hot between my
shoulders; my skin was deep amber. I approached the desert with dry
lips. Sand crept into my backpack, hid in my pockets and sleeping bag. I
had become an Israelite roaming in the desert, returning to the land-
scape of my ancestors. Once again I had become that nomad searching
in the sand for my ancestral inscriptions.
Malkah, Malkah, we have arrived, says our guide. Look over
there. See those green palms? Thats it, over there.
In this massive terrain of aridity, I had slid through copper-tinged
canyon walls and scampered up mountain trails; I had awoken under a
canopy of stars and watched a globe of fire paint red streaks across the
sky; I had been tickled by the sands of a chamsin and purged of all
desire to speak. I had rappelled down sheer cliffs and bathed in pools of
mountain-fed water; I had walked miles by foot and been jostled and
jiggled by the humps of a camel seat, my legs scratched by a rough
woolen blanket. I had imbibed the golden radiance of a sunrise, and I
had sipped tea from stained glasses in the tents of Bedouin.
Impermanence was the signature of this lunar landscape, with its
parched soil and brooding rocks. My feet left prints, imprints, foot-
prints, quickly erased by the shifting sands. But was there something of
N AM E S AN D N OM ADS 35
a trace? The outline of my footprints, my markings inscribed in their

particularity? Perhaps the traces of my search had been added to all
those who had gone before. After all, my ancestral history was tied to
these fragments, these traces of a presence, these overblown marks in
the desert sands.
Lie down and listen to the sound of the desert, the guide had
whispered. Listen with your whole spirit, not just your ears. Listen to
the sounds around you.
Jews. The wanderers, the tribesmen. The Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The list of names of a people exiled from their land. Throughout their
history it has always been a belief in words, the words of God, that
carried this band of migrants across the desert sands. Trials and tribula-
tions hindered their course of action, but they persisted in their jour-
ney.
Nomads. Gypsies. Names to describe groups of roving people with-
out a home. Races of traces and footprints left behind. As the poet
Jabs reminds us, born of exile and survival, the Jew carries the book in
his head, memorizing the traces of the law.
Ancient Mesopotamia, this piece of land in the southern half of
modern-day Iraq, was once home of the greatest civilization known to
man in the Middle Bronze Age. The civilization, known today as Sumer,
spilled over the headwaters of the Persian Gulf and consisted of a clus-
ter of city-states that were sometimes united, or federated, and at other
times antagonistic. A rich culture of barter, trade, and agriculture, these
people produced generations of scribes, priests, soldiers, magicians,
jewelers, and potters, among other professions. Clan loyalties and tribal
rivalries precipitated intervention from neighboring Akkadians, Babylo-
nians, Assyrians, and much later Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Their
scribes were the precursors of modern-day script, replacing the earlier
pictographs, whereby symbols were used to represent words, with
wedge-shaped letters. Their religion dictated the erection of a pantheon
of deities with towers honoring the gods of the air, earth, sky, and water.
In the heart of this rich region, bounded by the Persian Gulf and the
mountains of Armenia, by the Iranian plateau and the Syrian desert,
was Ur, the Sumerian capital. As the Jewish scholar Charles Raddock
writes, And here, then, within the shadow of a ziggurat tower that rose
up from a moon-god temple dominating the city, the first Jew was
bornphysical and spiritual progenitor of the Jewish People, according
36 CHA P TER 4
to the ancient chronicles, which cite his birthplace as Ur Khasidim, in

the valley of the Chaldees. 1
This time, on a second trip, I was trekking farther south through the
parched wilderness. I was returning to the exact place where the Book
of Books had its beginning. A group of eight Israeli nomads, two Bed-
ouin, one Canadian, and four camels exploring the desert landscape, a
sandy wasteland that stretched out into infinity. I inhaled a timelessness
that expanded into perpetuity.
It is the sixth day of my trek, which began at the mouth of a great
wadi (dry riverbed) near Ain Hudera. Our band of travelers has been
roaming through the sandy and stony wilderness of the plateau of Ba-
diet el Tih, the Wilderness of Wandering. In this area, south of a
sandstone belt of turquoise and copper, miners of the Pharaonic period
had once crossed paths with the pilgrims and monks attracted to the
heavenly Sinai. As I gain consciousness of the day, I rub my eyes in
the still darkness. Each morning, until now, I have risen to face the east,
where sunrise turns the variegated sandstone sculptures of this region
into an array of gold and copper, reminding me of a palette of Jerusa-
lem stone.
Our guide awakens us at 4:00 a.m. The frigid air seeps into my bones
as I slip out of my sleeping bag and into my woolly sweaterfrom one
warm cocoon into another. The tent is pitched several hundred meters
away from the famous Saint Catherines Monastery at the foot of Mount
Moses.
This monastery was built under the order of the Byzantine emperor
Justinian I in the sixth century CE to commemorate the site where
Moses (Prophet Musa) talked to God in the miracle of the Burning
Bush. Today monks continue to practice this heritage that extends from
the giving of the Law, through the whole of the Old and New Testa-
ments, to the multitude of saints whose memory has been enshrined at
Sinaiabove all, to the All-Holy Theotokos, the holy prophets Moses
and Elias, and Saint Catherine.
It was in this region, then Upper Egypt, that Coptic monks traveled
to the sandy and stony deserts of the southern Sinai Peninsula to lead a
strictly ascetic life in extreme seclusion from the world, in line with the
consilia evangelica. These counselsabsolute poverty, celibacy, and
unconditional obediencewere taken seriously by those who wished to
attain perfection in this life and the life thereafter as based on the
Christian gospels.
Turning their back on the world, these hermits settled in the valleys
and on the slopes of the inaccessible Sinai mountains in the south,
founding small colonies of monks, living in little hand-built huts or
caves fashioned out of the rock. In time, these scattered hermitages
were joined by other monastic communities under the leadership of an
abbot who kept vigilance and ensured strict adherence to the rules of
monastic life.
This morning we are about to ascend Mount Sinai, the biblical
Mount Horeb, known locally as Jebel Musa, where Moses is said to
have received the Ten Commandments. We are eager to begin our
ascent before the great solar disc paints the mountaintops in shades of
red and orange. The climb is gradual until the final phase, where the
necessity of doing nothing but put one foot in front of the other dictates
our pace. Finally we arrive and settle on a rugged platform, like an
audience in a high-altitude amphitheater awaiting the spectacle. We
wait and we are not disappointedthe brilliance of sunrise on top of
the world.
As we make our descent and retrieve our steps along the desert trail,
I am reminded of Abrahams story, the story of a lone traveler making
his way along the Euphrates River from Ur north to Haran, followed by
a series of multiple wanderings. And it continues with another epic
adventure of the region: the great Exodus from Egyptian bondage and
slavery to freedom and liberation, the story of an entire nation of twelve
Israelite tribes making their way to a new land.
In speaking with my guide, I learn that the words Arab and Hebrew
are thought to share a similar root related to being nomadic. In the
history of Arabic people in the pre-Islamic world, nomads roamed the
Arabian desert under the guidance of those who knew the path. They
understood the promise that awaited them at the next oasis and lived
with the reality of that losing ones way meant aimless wandering. Men
and women followed the lead of an elder of the family, the shaykh, who
moved a herd from one oasis to the next. The unity of the family was
necessary not only to avoid the possibility of getting lost, but also to
protect the clan from inevitable raids, ghazwa, ubiquitous to Arabian
society.
38 CHA P TER 4
The shared nomadic origins of these two distinct but closely related
peoples are easily forgotten in todays political climate.
***
And so began my linguistic excursion into the world of nomads and
nomadology, words and etymology. A journey that provided a compel-
ling perspective for considering the origins of the term name that may
add another dimension to the fixed designation of the proper name.
First I wish to set the scene for this speculative journey that I call the
shifting nomadic signifier. In fact, I owe these hypothetical comments
to a friend and colleague, Claude Rabant, a psychoanalyst in Paris, who
first introduced this notion as a sidebar at a presentation he was giving
on the Unconscious.
Etymology is historys classroom. Etymological details, the docu-
mentation of word formations and development, provide clues and
hints to the unfolding of the life history of word meanings. The original
traces of a words source lead to a primary wellspring of information
about the growth of words, in particular the etymological history of the
words nomas and nomen, both of which are related to the word name,
which in its Latin equivalent includes two possible chainsnomen and
nomosthe former being the more typical.
Let us begin with nomadology. What do we know about nomadic
life? Our ancestral predecessors, Homo erectus and, even later, Homo
sapiens, were original naturalists. Living and subsisting by their apti-
tude and cunning, they foraged for wild foodeggs, nuts, fruits and
vegetables, animal carcasses, and seafoodand uprooted themselves
once supplies were depleted. Initially autonomous and self-sufficient,
early man banded together and roamed the inhabitable lands of the
earths terrain in small groups. These hunter-gatherers, the itinerant
wanderers of the Paleolithic era, were forever on the move wherever
food and shelter beckoned. This pattern remained unchanged until ten
thousand years ago.
The first human revolution, the Neolithic, so coined in 1920 by Vere
Gordon Childe, an archaeologist and philologist, was a muted transfor-
mation in the evolution of mans development. It was not noisy or loud,
obtrusive or brash, but nevertheless it radicalized mans relationship to
the elements. The unprecedented development of emerging agricultu-
ral practices created a stir in the mode of survival in primitive man.
Embryonic agricultural practices were adopted and refined in an ex-

panding network of communities.
Gradually the mappable landscape of early man spread into various
areas, including parts of the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica, and the
Andes, beginning as early as ten thousand years ago. Domesticated
plants and animals were identified and named, while local culture in-
corporated the harvesting, breeding, and consumption of local species.
Today, thirty to forty million nomads redistribute and reposition
themselves annually in small communities around the globe, preferring
a lifestyle of movement rather than one of permanent settlement. No-
madic hunting and gathering, based on seasonal change and availability,
is the grandfather of contemporary nomadic, subsistence living. Pastor-
alists confine themselves to certain areas but move through wet and dry
seasons with their livestock as resources are depleted and replenished.
These pastoral nomads trace their roots to the southern Levant, fore-
bears of societies in the Sinai desert. Peripatetic nomads, on the other
hand, typified by the Gitanes or other Roma clans, ply their trades and
crafts for those with whom they come into contact through their travels,
setting up camps within urban centers and industrialized countries.
So how do nomads figure into this labyrinth of word meanings? The
word nomad is another cousin of the Latin word nomos. Etymology
paints a convincing canvas for us. Nomads circulated in tribes and
therefore were required to share territories with other tribes, which
eventually led to the necessity of usage rights. This is my land, this is
yours; this is the boundary between what is yours and what is mine. And
so begins the establishment of a framework of law, or nomos.
In the beginning, I imagine tokens or traits of some kind to denomi-
nate space as mine and yours. I visualize bearded men on camels or
donkeys approaching a gathering of tents. The elder male, hearing the
sounds of rustling and movement by his own animals, emerges from the
protection of his tent and with trepidation greets the newcomer. Words
are exchanged; tea is offered or refused, granted or withdrawn. To
avoid a constant degeneration into discord and conflict over boundaries
and limits of land usage, these tribes needed the intercession of some-
one who knew the law and had a capacity to judge, a man (or woman)
who knew the law (nomos), who could judge (nomezo), and who had
knowledge (gnosis) to make decisions regarding land usages. This per-
40 CHA P TER 4
son, the judge, was then in a position to mete out decisions regarding
property and land claims.
For this system to work, however, a name (nomen) was required.
This name would be the mark, the signifier, that would identify mine
from yours or his. This name would represent a certain cut or incision
creating a divisiona cut of identification as well as a cut that estab-
lishes a boundary. This land, named A, belongs to me and is my land;
that land, named B, belongs to you and is your land. It has now been
inscribed by a law that has been decided by a judge who knows about
these things. This process of naming and inscribing into law established
a legal order among the tribal groups. In fact, all of these terms share a
common base root, nem-, which has to do with pastures (nemein means
put to pasture), land allotment, and the dispensing of justice.
If we pull on the other etymological thread, we find that the English
word name derives from the Old English nama, or noma, meaning
name or reputation, and is equivalent to the French nom from the
Latin word nomen and the Greek word onoma, onyma. This family of
words slides from the Greek word gnomikos back to gnome (thought,
opinion, maxim, or intelligence), the root of which is giginoskein, to
come to know. By ones name or reputation, we come to know some-
one. From nomen, we derive nomenclature, nomination, and cogno-
menall of which contain the seed word nama (or nomen in Latin).
From nomos, Greek for law or custom, we derive the concept of law
developed in ancient Greek philosophy.
Similarly, the English word nomad slides backwards in time from
its Middle French derivative nomade, to its Latin precursor nomas,
nomadis (wandering groups), to its earliest source in the Greek word
nomas, a sibling of the Latin nomos. So nomos, the human law of con-
vention (to be distinguished from physis, the Greek term for the natural
set of laws), shares with the root of nomas, the nomad, the common
root nem-. This places it in proximity and contiguity with division and
distribution, while nomen, with its rootedness in gnome, meaning
thought and knowledge, slips seamlessly from one to the other.
***
I asked my friend Deborah about how Hebrew words might link to
any of these terms. Our friendship goes back to our high school days.
Different intellectual orientations and interests have separated our
paths, but an appreciation of the power of speech and dialogue contin-
ues to unite us. She is a wise woman who holds mystery and a mystical
sense of the divine close to her heart and her soul.
She responded with a smile of sagesse. I speak something; I create
something by my speaking. Too much speaking puts us in the desert
since wisdom is also the silence within. The desert, this vast landscape,
entails a journey into wilderness, a place of silence and stillness devoid
of any-thing; yet to speak is to affirm or say some-thing. To speak is to
create and to bring into existence.
The Hebrew language is based on a very structured system whereby
each word contains a basic root structure of three consonants. A nomad
is a navad who wanders (noded), with these two words sharing the same
root nun-aleph-daled, or nod (migration). More interesting is the emer-
gence of the word midbar (desert) from the verb daber, meaning to
speak, closely related to davar, which means both word and thing.
The Jews wandered in the desert. Idle chatter and the deserts si-
lence was broken when they were spoken to: Here are the command-
ments transmitted from God to Moses and then to the people. Here are
the words of the Law, the inheritance which you shall carry forward
from this place of wandering.
And the people responded and affirmed their connection to their
God: Yes, we shall obey your commandments.
In a delightful book on Jewish journeys, Jeremy Leigh points out
that, having left the vice of Egyptian stronghold and slavery on their
way to adopting a monotheistic and legal culture, the Jews needed to
travel through a place of speaking in order to transform themselves. 2
The desert represents this transformative journey, and the trek through
this no-mans-land of silence and speech is told and retold every year at
the annual seder on the first night of the holiday of Passover.
We have names because we were nomads, suggests the poet Jabs,
and because we have names, we will become nomads again. Paraphras-
ing these words, we can say: The name continues the trek. Each name
conveys the memories of those who went before and of those who will
follow.
***
Oral traditionthat is, the recording and transmitting of oral histo-
ry, oral law, oral literature, and other knowledge across generations
developed prior to the practice of the written word. Storytelling, its
stepchild, is the combination of words and images, song and poetry,
42 CHA P TER 4
performed through improvisation, to communicate past events. We are

familiar with this activity of passing on life stories and histories through
fairy tales, the once-upon-a-time world of nowhere in particular, and
the legends based on the transmission and embellishment of actual
events; the stories based on the experiences of storytellers who have
gone abroad and those who have stayed at home; tales of the resident
tiller of the soil and the trading seaman; and, finally, the improvisa-
tional theater of stories that constitute the modern-day version of story-
telling.
Family history is the birthplace of oral tradition and history. We all
need and rely on a past and a memory to invoke the individual reminis-
cences of our own life. We carry our past in our pockets like nomads
who carry with them the articles of their daily rituals. Narratives and
folktales, family myths and secretsthese are the envelopes of legends
we transmit to succeeding generations. Early man who lived in clans
and tribes relied on an oral history that only later became documented.
Only with the passage of time did the passing on of family and life
histories become a written record through documentation and paper-
work, a record that would be added to the treasure chest of family
heirlooms and keepsakes.
5
CHOOSING NAMES
The proper name in most Western societies is composed of the given

name, the middle name, and the surname (the reverse of the Eastern
formulation of family name then given name). The given name is the
donato, the gift or the given. This first, or given, name marks our singu-
larity and particularity. Well before the newborns arrival, parents along
with friends and relatives will debate over the most fitting or desired
name. Arguments ensue: Shall it be my mothers or your sisters middle
name? Whom do we honorUncle Sammy or your cousin Theodore? I
want to name my daughter Liza after Elizabeth Taylor or Ginny after
Virginia Woolf. We will name our son after his uncle who is athletic and
strong so that he may reflect these qualities; no, we will name our child
after dear grandpa.
In many cases, tradition overrides personal choice. In certain cul-
tures, names of the deceased are passed on to newborns; in others,
words of title, such as Junior or Senior, are appended to mark the
lineage. And in First Nations cultures, naming is selected by tribal
elders who dream the names to be given to the newly born.
I met a woman who told me the story of her neighbor, a father-to-be
who had been very concerned about the permanence of the name he
was planning to give his child. Knowing it would be a son, he insisted
there were three situations, each requiring the use of the name, that
had to be considered in the selection process:
Can Zebedee come out and play?
Will we give the job to Theobald?
43
44 CHA P TER 5
I want to marry Clothilde.

This man ended up naming his twin sons Robert and James. His
sons, now in their thirties, have been blessed with good fortune, which
he attributes to their perfect names. His questions point directly to
the implicitly magical or prophetic associations we develop in relation
to names and naming.
A recent radio broadcast discussed the pros and cons of naming
children with double first names such as Jim James, Leslie Carroll, Bob
Dylan, John Evan, Lyle Stewart, Susan Charmaine, or Peter Gabriel.
The researchers concluded that this kind of naming created confusion
and unnecessary and repeated questioning for the children.
Another study, carried out by an American Ivy League university
and reported on the radio, mentioned the findings of university accep-
tance based on names. They determined that certain traditional-sound-
ing North American names were more likely to lead to an admission
over those that were either less conventional or sounded foreign.
Some parentswittingly or nothave inflicted suffering on their
children by giving them bizarre, unusual, or difficult-sounding names.
As a colleague said to me, Some parents do awful things to their chil-
drenimagine having to go through life with the name Honeysuckle,
Lee Lee, Memphis, or Savion.
While the contemporary trend is to name children with more exotic
or unique names than in the past, it can sometimes be too much for a
young child to handle. A boy whose parents chose the name Arielle for
him finally changed his name to John after constant teasing at school.
I remember the summer I worked at Expo 67 in Montreal selling
postcards and tourist trinkets at an outdoor booth. All employees were
required to wear nametags to help create an atmosphere of familiarity
and informality. One day a gentleman, after staring curiously at my
nametag, asked if Mavis was my given name or my surname, adding, I
wonder why your parents hated you. I laughed awkwardly but was
startled by his comment. One friend later said, Maybe he was staring at
your chest and disliked what he saw!
***
While we have moved away from certain older traditions that once
imbued the name with a certain sanctity and power, the psychological
resonances of the proper name inevitably linger within each of us. The
close association we develop between our name and the person we are
CH OOSI N G N AM E S 45
becomes inextricably intertwined over time. Seemingly innocuous when

first given, the name takes on a life of its own once put into circulation
from birth. Even seemingly frivolous names still carry a psychic weight
and expand over time, for the sound of our name reverberates deep
within us.
After all, our name, for better or worse, is our escort through life. No
name, no history. The recording of human history is wrapped in a
narrative that bears a collection of names. The name ensures each hu-
man being a place in life that extends beyond our pure biology and that
travels forwards and backwards in our universal saga.
While the first name is more flexible and reflects personal, cultural,
or religious practices, the surname is a fixed form, whether patrilineal
or matrilineal. This is the name that guarantees each of us a place of
honor in our family tree. It is a link to both a particular family and to a
family within a larger community with roots that twist and turn back-
wards in time. Our ancestral name links us to our past and to the history
of our family.
In the vast majority of cases, the surname or family name is also a
geographical and/or ethnic marker. If we read a list of names, we can
frequently yoke the names with their nationality, their geographical
marker. For example: OReilly, OHenry. MacLeod, McAlastair, Mac-
Cutcheon. Van Deusen, Van der Meer, Vanderbilt, Van Brunt. Di-
amontopolous, Angelopoulous, Pappadakas. Manoukian, Atchabahian,
Istamboulian. Wong, Chung, Yiang. Suyin, Shen, Suzuki. Takamura,
Yamamoto. Rossi, De Lucca, Romano. Vasilyev, Romanov, Mikhailov.
Similarly, we can also identify ethnic origins by surname: Rabino-
vitch, Goldstein, Rothman. Abdullah, El-Gazzawy, Mohammed, Ban-
nerjee, Pradapati, Singh.
Reflexively, we make assumptions about peoples ethnic or religious
attachment based on the sound of their names. Regrettably, our auto-
matic reactions have led to discrimination and prejudice in the work-
place, in educational institutions, and in the political sphere. The tradi-
tion of name change associated with marriage in our patrilineal society
is an accepted cultural convention. In large urban centers, like New
York or Toronto, where interracial marriages are more common, as-
sumptions based on our associations of names leads to unanticipated
encounters. We are surprised to encounter a Caucasian woman with the
46 CHA P TER 5
name Marilyn Wong or Susan Obasanjo or when we greet an Asian man

with the name Jason Wong.
Unfortunately, some surnames carry undesirable meanings in a lan-
guage, lending themselves nasty teasing: Shelley Gross, Jennifer Bland,
Jeffrey Shmuckles, Jonathan Cox. All of us remember how cruel our
classmates could be in verbal teasing and name-calling. Mavis Heinz
and Johnnie Weiner is a phrase I recall; even writing it today makes me
cringe.
A woman once told me there was no end to the name-calling she
experienced in grade school with her surname, Lips: from Hot Lips and
Wet Lips to Miss Kissy-Kissy and Miss Smoochy. She cried for a year
trying to persuade her parents to change their name. Another friend
told me he knew that in his grade school there was a boy of African
descent who, whether affectionately or mean-spiritedly, was cajoled
endlessly by children in all of his classes because of his surname, Black-
man. He apparently would laugh along with the others as a way of
shielding himself from pain. Recently, I met a woman whose surname
Makelove made me wonder what kind of torment she endured in ado-
lescence.
Middle names, a slightly later invention in the West, include one or
more names. The North American tradition includes the option of ei-
ther appending an additional first name or an additional surname (e.g.,
Edward Michael Winters or Charles Walker Humphreys). In some
families, middle names are chosen to reflect a mothers maiden name or
the name of a deceased family member (e.g., Margaret Darby Chat-
sworth).
The other term often heard in reference to names and naming is the
patronym (or patronymic), a personal name based on the given name of
ones father, grandfather, or even earlier male ancestor. In certain soci-
eties, this would be a matronym (or matronymic), based on the name of
ones mother or a female ancestor. Today, patronyms have largely been
replaced or transformed into patronymic surnames, although they are
still used, even mandatorily, in many countries. For example, the prince
of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, is the son
of the late King Fahd from the House of Saud and Al Jawhara bint
Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, from the wealthy house of Al-Ibrahim. His wifes
name is Al Anoud bint Faisal bin Mishaal Al Saud. In all these cases, the
individual is clearly identified by both parents through the blending of
patronyms and matronyms, a practice typical in many Muslim countries

of the Middle East.
***
The name is so much part of ourselves, so much taken for granted,
that it is only when our name is mispronounced or misspelt that we find
a knee-jerk reactivity to such occurrences. We may be outraged or
annoyed, amused or incensed, depending on the perceived ease of
enunciation. But we always react and respond with the correction im-
mediately at hand.
My colleague Ron Charach (pronounced sha-RACK) once wrote an
article published in the Toronto Star about the typical errors he experi-
enced as a child in the pronunciation and spelling of his name. Given
the unusual combination of two identical diphthongs (ch) in his name,
one at the beginning and one at the end, with each pronounced differ-
ently, he constantly had to correct his teachers and others who automat-
ically spelled his name with a Sh instead of a Ch.
I was seated beside a woman at a social function once whose name-
tag read F-E-L-I-E-S. I must have looked perplexed, because she said,
Its pronounced Phyllis; my Hungarian parents invented this unique
spelling of my name. She told me that people commonly pronounced it
fe-LEESE or FEL-is. To this day, when asked for her name to be
recorded on a form or document, she automatically sounds it out: F as
in Fancy, E, L as in Lisa, I, E, S like in Sam. This is the same phrase I
have been using since grade school, she said. It just rolls off my
tongue.
For those with foreign-sounding or uncommon names, or names
that challenge the dialect of the local population, mispronunciation be-
comes a common incident, a source of potential discomfort or even
shame. The other day, I was noting the name of someone who spelled
her name before I had a chance to even ask.
I just read in a newspaper about a man whose first name, Gintaras,
was given him to honor his Lithuanian heritage. This birth name, fre-
quently shortened to the nickname Gint, was inevitably mispronounced
as Jintaras or Jint, with a soft g. And like Felies, he corrected people
with the refrain, Its Gint. Like mint with a G. He described the
endless explanations required of him due to his names unusual pronun-
ciation until he switched to using his middle name, Paul. He said that
polite Canadians who could not read his nametag at work either
48 CHA P TER 5
avoided calling him by any name or else referred to him as you. While
admitting that Paul seemed very un-Canadian in light of the countrys
encouragement of pride in ones homeland, he felt that his choice had
simplified his life and made him a much happier Canadian.
My friend Anna tells me that her now-adult son, whose Polish name
is difficult to both pronounce and read, had always insisted on retaining
his birth name: Bogusz Kolodziejska. Teased by others as a school-age
child (Bogusz is a bogus! Bogus money, Bogus honey!) and handi-
capped in his job searches as an adultand encouraged by his mother
to change his namehe nevertheless was adamant about this part of his
identity. Anna, on the other hand, had shortened her own (maiden)
surname to sound different, more interesting. Why not? I wanted to
reinvent myself, she says in her accented English. New country, new
neighborhood, new career, new name.
Another friend, this one from Croatia, tells me that she had named
her younger son Veselko, which means cheerful, and her older son
Vladimir, which means to rule with greatness. As far back as she can
remember, Veselko hated his name and constantly threatened to
change it to a more Canadian-sounding one. He hated standing out and
did not want to be different. His mother confided to me that his name
fit him so well, as he was such a sunny and cheerful child. She tried
explaining to him that he could blend into his peer group in so many
other waysby his dress, through his activitiesbut that his name was
unique and was his personal mark. Years later, he is still muttering
about his name under his breath but is resigned to having a Croatian
first name and surname.
***
Today in North America, we are bombarded by new names. Origi-
nality and uniqueness characterize the current naming fashion. My
friends children who are now themselves having children consider such
uncommon names as Spencer, Ebony, Nova, or Delyia. Yet in spite of
the pursuit of originality, considerable attention and foresight is given in
choosing names.
Parents often name their children after a person they admire in the
hopes that their children will acquire those talents or rise to the stature
of their namesakes. In certain cultures, young boys named after famous
leaders are pressured to model themselves after those grand men for
whom they were named, such as Alexander (the Great). The fickleness
of names is a measure of changing times and circumstances. A hero in

one decade may fall out of favor in the next. While Malvolio and Desde-
mona both mean ill fated and Mallory means unlucky, today it is
names that have become contaminated, like Judas or Damien, that re-
main stigmatized by superstitious beliefs.
A Frenchman I know named his newly born son Ambroise Luv. He
told me that his sons name had come to him in a dream vision prior to
the childs birth: Your son will be named Ambroise! Himself a writer, he
said, Ambroise, like the elixir of immortality of the gods of Olympus;
Ambroise like the Norman chronicler of the third crusade, poet in the
court of Richard the Lionhearted; like Ambroise Pare, father of modern
surgery during the Renaissance; and like Ambroise Croizat, known as
the Parisian minister of the workers. Then he added, And his middle
name will be Luv, like one of the twin sons of Lord Rama, an undefeat-
able warrior in the Ramayana; and of course, Luv like Love.
A Canadian patient of mine told me that her daughter and son-in-
law, a Trinidadian of East Indian descent, had named their daughter
Naiya Kalli. Naiya is a Lakota First Nations word for breath, and Kalli
is an orthographic variation of Kali, the mother goddess of Hinduism
who brings death to the illusory forces of the ego and liberation to souls.
On the other hand, a friend whose daughter had just named her
child Hunter, said, What kind of name is that? Is it a surname, a girls
name, or a boys name? I have to remind my daughter that her little girl
will have to wear this name for life. And what will happen when she
comes across the word hunter for the first time in a book? Will she
become frightened and confused when she learns that a hunter is some-
one who shoots animals?
Another friend of mine told me that her aunt and uncle had never
agreed about the name given to her cousin. While the father preferred
Nancy, the mother was enamored of the less-common name Meredith.
The compromise was that she was named Nancy Meredith Smith. For
most of her life, she was known as Nancy, her fathers preference hav-
ing prevailed. However, when he died, Nancy then being in her forties,
her mother began calling her Meredith, never having quite given up on
her own favorite. Today, Nancy has changed her name completely to
Mary, a contraction of Mer-y; she could not tolerate the thought of
using the fully contracted name Mer-cy.
50 CHA P TER 5
One woman told me that there were five girls in her family. The first
three were named Sharon, Sandra, and Sylvia. While she had been
named Cynthia after a friend of her mothers who had died, her mother
renamed her Shirley at six months. Her mother confessed that she felt
it didnt sound right after all those Ss. Then when she had another
daughter, there was no question that it would be Sonya, as she was
committed to the S names.
Given names since the 1950s have shown increasingly more variation
with each decade than in previous generations. While Susan, Barbara,
Linda, Michael, John, and David were popular in the mid-fifties and
even sixties, Ashley, Jessica, Emily, Christopher, Tyler, and Brandon
became the darling names of the nineties, only to be replaced by Ethan,
Jayden, and Aiden for boys and Sophia, Abigail, and Chloe for girls
currently. Sociological trends and socio-cultural movements insidiously
work their way into naming practices. Sky, Autumn, Moonstruck, and
Wind are names popular with certain individuals caught up in the hey-
day of the sixties hippie movement, while Justice and Charity signal a
traditional preoccupation with Christian morality and ethics.
Fortunately, this uniqueness in the first given name is almost univer-
sally balanced by the consideration of a family relative for the second
given, or middle, name. In some families, the name is cemented and
strengthened by suffixes (e.g., Junior or Senior, the elder, the younger)
replacing the more formal and regal numerals (e.g., Adam the Fifth,
John the Second). Of course, the desire to be remembered or memori-
alized in history is a two-edged sword. Nazi officers who named a son
Adolf in honor of their fhrer may have had second thoughts once the
war was over.
The grace and sophistication of certain names make them truly
memorable. When people are introduced to my husband, they inevita-
bly comment on the elegance of his name: Lawlor Rochester. In fact,
his full name is Bertram David Lawlor Rochester, a name with a reso-
nance of distinction and merit.
On the other hand, we are repelled by the sound of certain names.
Pollux is the name of the rapist in J. M. Coetzees book Disgrace, a
formidable novel about exploitation and violence in a time of transition
in South Africa. While the protagonist makes an issue of the ugliness of
the sound of this mans name, he refers to it often, as if intoning its
disgraceful and reprehensible sound. Similarly, other names with harsh,
guttural consonantsfor example, Grammok or Pitkaare deemed

unpleasant by their lack of musicality and softness.
Not only do names reflect generational and historical trends, they
also tell a story about the local socio-political climate. Only fifty to sixty
years ago, in certain geographical pockets of rural Quebec and Ontario
where tension between the Anglophone and Francophone communities
was high, certain French families insisted on names that could not be
Anglicized in pronunciation or spelling: Leoni, Hector, Isidore, or El-
mire instead of Michel, which could become Mike or Michael, and
Guillaume, which could be changed to William. As a result, certain
names became overused in those communities.
***
How did the modern usage of a given name followed by a family
name come about? After all, for the ancient Greeks, a simple solitary
name sufficed for both men and women (with no change for women
after marriage). Not only the Olympian gods and goddessesApollo,
Artemis, Athena, Zeusand not only the heroes of ancient Greece
Heracles, Theseus, Medea, Perseusbut all mortals carried their repu-
tations in a condensed name: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Euripides, Ci-
cero, Euclid, Virgil, Herodotus. However, to be distinguished from
each other, these names might be appended with an indication of place
of birth or a title. For example, Diogenes of Sinope (412323 BC),
better known as Diogenes the Cynic, was not to be confused with Dio-
genes of Apollonia or Diogenes Apolloniates (ca. 460 BC) or Diogenes
of Babylon, better known as Diogenes the Stoic (ca. 230ca. 150 BC).
Many of these names recall a period when names were assigned on the
basis of different criteria: the desire for complimentary associations or
meaning and beloved characteristics (Megacles, of great fame; Theo-
philus, the beloved of god; or Demeter, the giver of food like a
mother); the incorporation of the name of a god, such as Heracleitus,
glory of Hera; the reflection of personal characteristics, such as Plato,
meaning broad-shouldered, or Simonides, meaning type of flat-
nose; or the circumstances of birth, such as Didymus, a twin.
As we shall see in the next chapter, etymological meanings played a
major role in many Greek names. Any list of popular ancient Greek
names will include: Pericles, the fifty-century BC Athenian statesman
and general whose name derives from peri- (around, in excess of) and
kleos (glory); or Stephanos, meaning crown, named after St. Stephen;
52 CHA P TER 5
or Demetrius, the king of Macedon and the Seleucid kingdom, whose

name is derived from the goddess Demeter.
Freely chosen names, those ancient names we still hear today in
modified forms (Damion, Alexander, Rhoda, Sophia, Jason, Irene), al-
ternated with names in respect of deceased or living paternal grand-
fathers. Lineage was never far from naming practices: A persons patro-
nymic might be added to indicate genos, or clan. If further identifica-
tion was necessary, a fathers name might be added in the genitive case,
such as Pericles, (son) of Xanthippus. On occasion, a persons deme, or
parish/local community, might be also added. By contrast, the ancient
Romans, inheriting a tradition from the Etruscans, announced them-
selves in full form: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa,
or Gaius Albucius Silusembellished names that commanded respect
and admiration. Tria nomina: the praenomen, or personal given name;
the nomen or gentilicium, or name of the clan, kinship, or gens; and the
cognomen, a personal nickname or an inherited name indicating the
branch within the clan. Over the centuries, notable people from this
period have become renowned by a single name: Cicero, also known as
Tully (Marcus Tullius Cicero), Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus),
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus).
By the late Roman period, Christian names appeared, replacing
Greek, Jewish, and Latin names that had been the tradition. Rituals of
baptism ensured a religious significance to the assignment of names.
Emerging in the lists of popularity were theophoric names, or those
derived from names of divinities to ensure their protection (deus-, theo-
); names derived from significant religious dates (Natalis, Epiphanius);
names expressing Christian values (Felix, Victor); and biblical names
and names of saints (Boniface, Liborius, Abraham).
Given names could be determined by birth circumstances (Deliver-
ance, Thankful); by saints (Maria, Sophia, Teresa); or simply by the
selection of classical names associated with each country, such as Ed-
ward, James, Samuel, Jane, and Elizabeth in English-speaking coun-
tries. Soon the pendulum swung back to single names, a trend that
continued through the Middle Ages with the replacement of Latin
names by Germanic names. Wider kinship was acknowledged by partic-
ular single names that then became associated with a single ancestral
group.
Mononymous people, individuals known and addressed by a single

name, have made an appearance throughout our collective history.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, the people he
encountered had mononyms, a custom typical of First Nations people
but a tradition that continued to survive until the nineteenth century:
Geronimo, a prominent leader of the Bedonkohe Apache; Auoindaon, a
Canadian First Nations chief; Pocahontas, a Virginia Powhatan Indian
woman, born Matoaka, and later known as Rebecca Rolfe; and Moctez-
uma, or Montezuma, the fifth Aztec emperor.
In contemporary Western society, mononymity, used by the royals in
conjunction with titles, has been primarily a privilege of famous persons
such as prominent writers, artists, entertainers, musicians, and sports-
men: among numerous others, the artist Christo, the sculptor Chryssa,
and the singer-songwriters Madonna and Enya. Masquerading behind
stage names, some of these mononymns are the performers actual giv-
en name (Cher, Shakira) and some are the performers actual surname
(Liberace, Mantovani, Morrissey), while others are invented names
(Bono) or nicknames (Sting, Prince).
By the late 1500s, at the end of the medieval period, radical changes
in the social and political context forced the need for the clarification
and identification of individuals. The written documentation of land
records and other civic transactions required an accounting of citizens.
As the pool of single names became depleted and the inconvenience of
identifying individuals by a single name became bureaucratically chal-
lenging in the records of municipal rulings, second names became
obligatory. The managers of civic life soon began to demand a second
name for the administrative convenience of tax collection, conscription,
and bureaucratic decrees associated with the functions of public life.
Second (family) names had already been evolving from the eleventh
century onwards, but it took another four centuries for them to become
firmly established and transmitted from generation to generation. Eu-
rope was the advance guard of this unfolding development that began
with aristocrats and royalty. Early family names reflected birthplaces
(Warsaw, Mannheim, Pollack); topographical features (Cranbrook,
Bergson); occupations (Goldschmit, or goldsmith; Fischer, or fisher-
man; Stein, or stoneware, beer mug); or names embellished with patro-
nymic prefixes or suffixes. Originality mixed with practicality gave many
names a distinctive flourish: Schmuckler (jeweler), Grossbard (big
54 CHA P TER 5
beard) versus Gelbart (yellow beard), Shein (good-looking), and Kirs-

chenblatt (cherry-colored paper).
Paralleling the growing shifts and transformations within the politi-
cal and socio-economic spheres were modifications in family structure
and dynamics. With the demand for a second (family) name, family
extraction was more easily recorded. Dynasties became linked through
males and the rights of primogeniture (special privileges accorded the
first-born male child) developed in families of nobility and royalty. The
patronymic became an important mode of naming by a translation of
the simple term son of through the use of suffixes or prefixes, such as
Markson or Jenssen (English), Fitzpatrick (Anglo-Norman), Leonov
(Russian), Macpherson (Scottish), and Fernandez (Spanish). This was
especially true of smaller and less established families.
From the sixteenth century onwards, in Europe and Britain, naming
practices once again shifted. While the second or family name clearly
rendered legitimacy to a child and the transmission of lineage from
father to son/daughter, first names were also considered a symbolic
patrimony to be passed down according to strict rules. Names were
both a link in a chain of dead ancestors and a program for the future,
designating a particular role and perhaps even an inheritance.
A woman I met by chance recently told me the meandering transfor-
mations of her surname, Toogood, over time. The name derives from
the English meaning do good, starting as Togood around 1200, to
Tougod from 1297, to Togoud from 1332, to Toogood and Twogood
from 1763, to Tigwood from 1770.
***
I am speaking to my friend Penny, whose surname, Lawler, is the
same as my husbands given name, Lawlor, which was also his mothers
maiden name. They tease and argue over the correct spelling of this
Irish surname. Penny, an ardent feminist, raises the question of how
her married daughters, who retained their hyphenated maiden names,
will name their own children.
Do you think they will drop their double surname made up of mine
and Peters family names and simply choose to adopt their husbands
surname? Will they create a new compound name with Peters or my
surname and then their fathers name? And how would they choose
which name to drop?
Penny is a pragmatic woman. In the end, she takes a deep sigh and
jokes, I guess theyll just have to work that one out on their own. But it
would have been easier if they were Spanish. You know, the Spanish
have hyphenated surnames of their mother and father, too. But when
they marry, the women simply drop their fathers name and keep their
mothers surname. Of course, this only applies to the upper class and
the nobility so they can trace the matrilineal line. Not for folks like you
and me, of courseonly the blue bloods. She adds, Youd better
check this out before you quote me.
My research told me that each person born into a Spanish-speaking
family is given a first name followed by two surnames, the first being
the fathers family name (or, more precisely, the surname he gained
from his father) and the second being the mothers family name (or,
again more precisely, the surname she gained from her father).
Take, for example, the name of Teresa Garca Ramrez. Teresa is the
name given at birth, Garca is the family name from her father, and
Ramrez is the family name from her mother. This custom of a double
surname apparently was influenced by earlier Arabic traditions.
In the generational transmission of surnames, the paternal sur-
names precedence eventually eliminates the maternal surnames from
the family lineage. So when Maria Blanco Cortez marries Rafael Lopez
Santiago, their children will be named Jos Lopez Blanco or Adelina
Lopez Blanco. While contemporary law allows the maternal surname to
be given precedence, most people observe the traditional paternal-ma-
ternal surname order. Regardless of the surname order, all childrens
surnames must be in the same order when recorded in the Registro
Civil.
I see that Penny was partly correct in her information when I also
discover that patrilineal surname transmission was not always the norm
in Spanish-speaking societies. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century,
when the current paternal-maternal surname combination norm came
into existence, Hispanophone societies often practiced matrilineal sur-
name transmission, giving children the maternal surname and, occa-
sionally, even a grandparents surname (born by neither parent). The
deceptive motive was based on pride and cachet. It was hoped that the
young woman so named would be perceived as gentry, and therefore a
profitable catch.
56 CHA P TER 5
In contemporary society, naming practices continue to vary across

cultures. In North America, the feminist movement has modified what
was once a traditional patrilineal naming pattern. Young women today
deliberate on the decision of adopting their husbands name, and I
know young men who have chosen to adopt the surname of their wives.
My parents certainly never would have considered such an option. To
this day, my mother continues to receive mail addressed to Mrs. Louis
Himes even though my father has been dead for several decades.
The socio-political and socio-cultural landscapes inevitably shift over
time with a predictable ebb and flow of trends, actions, and reactions
as is well documented in this editorial in Torontos Globe and Mail on
January 4, 2013, which I quote in full:
The tiny Nordic nation obliges parents to pick their childrens first
names from a government-approved list that does not include Ble
Ivy, Pilot Inspektor or Audio Science, all of which are the real names
of the real children of famous people who dont come from Iceland.
Now a young girl is challenging the state for her right to use her off-
list given name. Sometimes its hard to know which side to come
down on. The 15-year-old girl in question was baptized Blaer by a
priest who thought the name, which after all means light breeze in
Icelandic, was an approved one. However, its not on the list of 1,712
male names and 1,853 female names on the countrys Personal
Names Register: consequently, Blaer is referred to on all official
documents as Stulka which means girl. A panel that oversees the
register has rejected the name on grounds the noun it comes from
takes a masculine article. It issued this decision in spite of the fact
Blaer is the name of a female character in a novel by one of Icelands
most revered authors.
The ruling was made by the same panel that has approved Elvis as a
girls name in Iceland. The girl and her mother are prepared to go to
the countrys supreme court in their fight. It seems like a basic
human right to be able to name your child what you want, especially
if it doesnt harm your child in any way, the mother is reported to
have told the local media. Thats all that needs to be said in this case.
Blaer should be Blaer. Meanwhile young Pilot Inspektor can take
heart in the fact that, in countries that dont enforce government-
approved monikers, changing ones name is a relatively simple mat-
ter. 1
***
Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish writer and satirist, once wrote, Giving
a name, indeed, is a poetic art; all poetry if we go to that with it, is but a
giving of names. 2 In this quote, Carlyle reminds us not only of the
functional significance of name-giving but also of its poetic qualities
the assonance of sounds, the rhythmic composition, and the aesthetic
spirit. In this sense, the inscription of a name is a precious art form akin
to a poetic act.
Indeed, consider the name Abu al-Abbas Muhammed ibn Yaqub
ibn Yusus al-Asamm al-Naysaburi. Arabic-speaking people devote con-
siderable time and deliberation to the practice of child naming. The
bestowal of a name for a new life must be appropriate; but more signifi-
cantly, it must sound right. Do the syllables flow well? Do the various
parts of the name roll mellifluously from the tongue? Is the name poet-
ry? Do all the various elements fit well with each other? After all, the
language of angels 3 demands a poetic name. The constituent ele-
mentsism, kunya, nasab, laqab, and nisbamust all sing in harmony,
for the prophet Muhammad says: On the day of Judgment, you will be
called by your names and by your fathers names; therefore keep you
good names. Perhaps the Muslim philosophy, with its emphasis on
words bringing man closer to God, has become woven into the tapestry
of naming rituals.
Siyi, a colleague of mine, explained to me that Chinese proper
names are constructed individually from blended calligraphic charac-
ters with multiple meanings resembling verses of poetry. For example,
her name is a compound Chinese name that means If I am thinking, I
feel joyful and derives from the combination of Si (thinking or
thought) and Yi (joyful). Siyi and her husband gave much thought to the
name of their recent newborn. In the end, they agreed on the name
Yuxin (pronounced hu-shyn). This is a compound of the Chinese char-
acters yu (language as a noun and talking and discussing as a verb),
which itself is made up of two Chinese figures, the first meaning word
or talk and the second meaning I or me, and xin, which can mean
strong and pervasive fragrance and reputation, and is formed by
another two figures, the first meaning sound, tone, voice, reputation
and the second meaning fragrant incense.
From Siyis explanation, I understand this to imply: May her name
(the sound of her voice) be so fragrant that she will be well-known far
58 CHA P TER 5
and wide. As a psychotherapist also interested in Lacanian psychoanal-

ysis, Siyi elaborates, I believe that as humans we live in language and
look for ourselves through language; life is the process for people to
speak about themselves, and in speaking about themselves, they can
find themselves. Once my daughter speaks, I hope that what she says
will be fragrant and spread far and wide, so that her reputation will also
spread. If you could read Chinese, you would also see that her name
looks like a beautiful picture with many Chinese characters.
Names in Japan are also selected with care, hope, and blessings. The
Japanese believe that a name becomes a man and that to give a name
is to truly offer a person something. For example, the word for busi-
ness card in Japanese is a thin slice of a manhence the care with
which it is offered: a ritual attached to this exchange by the extension
and positioning of the hand. In Peter Olivas novel City of Yes, an
American who has moved to Saitama to teach English is informed by his
Japanese counterpart that to say a mans name is to bring him close,
close enough to see with the eyes or with the mind. 4
By contrast, we can compare these Eastern traditions with the more
purposeful and functional approach of name-giving in Western cul-
tures. For example, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch Gilbert du Motier,
or the Marquis de Lafayette, or simply Lafayette. Status: French aristo-
crat and military officer, major general in the Continental Army under
George Washington. Like other Europeans of the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury, Lafayettes full name announced his kinship as well as the lands
owned by his family. His full name announces prosperity; his surname
the practicality of brevity. Like the names of the royalty, nobility, and
gentry of Northern Europe, feudal names were abbreviated into bare
place names, as the inheritance of a name necessarily included the
inheritance of land and property.
6
CELEBRATING NAMES
As if to honor the sanctity of life, the symbolic act of name-giving was

once marked by elaborate ceremony. Such is still the case in cultures in
which ritual is still tied to the rhythms of daily life. Today in North
America and much of the West, baby naming is typically celebrated
within the privacy of our homes. For the most part, private family
festivities have replaced the solemn formal receptions once associated
with communal name-granting.
I am told that my naming occurred without fanfare. A simple in-
scription on a birth certificate recording my name, date, and place of
birth. In Judaism, no formal law requires a naming ceremony for girls.
Within the religious community, the naming of a baby girl typically was
announced by the father in synagogue on the first Shabbat, a day when
the Torah is read, following the birth.
By contrast, had I been born male, there would have been the ritual
circumcision ceremony (Brit Milah) on the eighth day of life. This fun-
damental tenet of Judaism, the covenant of circumcision, follows a di-
rect commandment to Abraham, the first patriarch, and, in turn, to all
his descendants: This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between
Me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be
circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin;
and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you (Gen. 17:10).
In a typical ceremony, the honor of handing the baby from the
mother to the father, who in turn carries him to the mohel (the man
who performs the circumcision), is given the title of kvater (male) or
59
60 CHA P TER 6
kvaterin (female). A childless couple is usually chosen for this honor,

with the hope of segula (or efficacious remedy); that is, of having chil-
dren of their own. Another example of superstitious thinking steeped
within Jewish tradition.
As women in the past few decades have demanded more equality
within the institution of Judaism and its ritual practices, the Simchat
Bat (celebration of the daughter) or Brit Bat (welcoming/covenant of
the daughter) has now become a popular naming ceremony for girls.
Families gather at the childs home for a communal welcoming, with
naming over a cup of wine, quotations from the Bible, and the chanting
of traditional blessings, all against a backdrop of chatter, laughter, and
joyous song. In an attempt to maintain egalitarian status with their male
counterparts, new rituals are now performed either singly or in varied
combinations, such as the lighting of seven candles (symbolizing the
seven days of creation) with the newborn held towards them, enfolding
the newborn within the four corners of a tallit, and the lifting and
touching of the babys hands to a Torah scroll.
My friends have described the Christian equivalent: the baptismal
christening that ushers in the new life of a baby boy or girl. Dressed in
an embroidered white christening gown, a keepsake handed down for
generations, or decked out in a special pair of white rompers designed
for the event, the infant, cradled in the arms of his parents or godpar-
ents, is sprinkled with water by the minister or priest as blessings are
recited.
An alternative to a baptism, for those who have no church affiliation
or who do not wish a formal baptismal service, is the Dedication (or
Thanksgiving) for the Gift of a Child ceremony. This ceremony is also a
celebration with prayers and promises. It is believed to symbolize the
act of Jesus, who blessed the future of each newborn: He took the
children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them (Mark
10:1316). Performed by a minister in any suitable setting desired by
the family, such as a home or community center, it is a more contempo-
rary ritual of the welcoming and naming of new life.
In Hinduism, baby naming is always a sacred occasion that demands
an elaborate ceremony known as Namakarana Sanskar, typically occur-
ring ten days following a birth. Hindu parents are obliged to perform
this social and legal ceremony. The naming process creates a bond
between the child and the rest of the family, and is therefore consid-
CE LE B RAT I N G N AM E S 61
ered to be a highly auspicious occasion. On the eleventh or twelfth day,

the parents of the newborn, the paternal and maternal grandparents,
and few close relatives and friends gather together with a priest. Rituals
vary within different communities; in some, the sacred fire is lit and the
priest chants sacred hymns. He offers prayers to all the gods and to the
Agni, the elements, and the spirits of the forefathers, entreating them to
bless and protect the child. In other traditions, there is a sprinkling of
water for purification, with the blessings focused on the hopes that the
child develop and become a great person like his renowned forefathers.
According to the date and time of the childs birth, a particular letter
of the Sanskrit alphabet associated with the childs lunar birth sign
(chandra rashi) and believed to be particularly lucky is chosen. The
childs horoscope, if written, may also be placed in front of the image of
the deity for blessings. The baby is then given a name starting with that
letter. Usually the father or paternal aunt whispers the Hindu name
four times in the right ear of the baby by using a betel leaf or its silver
imprint, or a few leaves of kusa grass, to direct the words into his ear.
After the customary blessings received by the priest and all guests, an
elaborate feast is organized as a closing festivity where friends and
relatives have an opportunity to bless the child by touching honey or
sugar to his or her lips.
***
Membership in all tribal and ethnic groups, in all religious and dy-
nastic communities, demands ceremony; ceremonial traditions sustain
continuity. Naming and its inaugural act ensure the ongoing chain of
identity and affiliation. Ritualistic festivities punctuate and strengthen
the bonds that link together like-minded peoples. Participating in an
emotionally significant rite of passage forges ongoing connection.
People have shared unique experiences associated with their naming
with me as I researched this book, some of which I describe in what
follows.
Rakgwedi is a twenty-one-year-old man. He is the son of a colleague;
I met him at a social function where he was working as photographer.
Tall, slender, and upright in his posture, he has high cheekbones and
long fingers. His voice does not match his height as he speaks in a quiet
voice.
62 CHA P TER 6
My name is a gift from my Ancestors. When my mother was preg-

nant, my Nkgono (paternal grandmother) had a vision in which she
was visited by the Ancestors. They came to her in the form of the
original Rakgwedi and his wife, Mokhotswane, who were pastoralists.
Had I been born a girl, I would have been named after the wife, but
as a boy, I was given the name Rakgwedi; the closest meaning in
English is ra (man) and kgwedi (moon). My African heritage on my
fathers side dictated that this spirit reside within me. For it is said,
You have a strong spirit on you. May you live up to this gift with the
help of the ancestors, whom you must appease. I am the last-born
son.
My ethnic group is Sotho; my people are Basotho, and my lan-
guage is Sesotho. My name is spelled differently in the northern and
southern dialectics of Sesotho. Not only have I inherited the name
from my paternal ancestors, but my body, long, lean, and angular,
and my height also remind me of my Basotho heritage. People think
that my brother and I do not resemble each other. Im not so sure; I
think that people are distracted by skin color. I am light-complected
like my father, Ramohnametsi.
My brothers skin is darker, not unlike our Nkgono, who is Tswa-
na. My first-born brothers name is Molifi; in English it would trans-
late the one who is prayed for. Coincidentally, his surname, Motau
(pronounced like mo-da-oo), means the one who comes from the
lion or son of lion, Tau being the clan totem for the Ramphore
family, our fathers clan. As my Ngkono would say, The Ancestors
know how to work these things out.
When I was born, my father introduced me to the Ancestors. All
the elders were called to attend this ritual. At six days, they all gath-
ered in the village of my birth. My father cut off my hair and
wrapped it in a small cloth sack, made of traditional material with
beads and a medallion, the totems my father chose to represent my
culture. My father then took me to the ocean, where the Big Spirits
live. From a cliff overlooking the waters, he lifted me up and held me
high in the air. Calling on the Ancestors, he introduced me to them.
Then he took the totem of hair and bead and traditional material and
tossed it into the waters.
Now as a young adult, I had to be reintroduced to the Ancestors
as a man. Once again, I returned to South Africa for this thirty-six-
hour introduction with specific ritualistic components. My brother
and I both shared in this reintroduction. Two sheep were slaugh-
tered as sacrifice, and this had to be done ritually by our father; in
order to make it right with the Ancestors, the place of slaughter and
the location of the fire-pits were very significant. One pot contained
the traditional sorghum-based beer to be used and served in a cala-
bash. There was a huge fire pot used to cook the meat. The blood
from the beasts was drained and buried in a secret place in the earth.
My brother and I were wrapped in colorful Basotho traditional blan-
kets. Molifis was brown and African sky blue; mine was gold with
black-outlined maize and small shields of red; both color combina-
tions are totems of the Basotho. Feasting, praying, and singing lasted
over a day with no sleep. Now that I have been reintroduced to my
Ancestors, my brother Molifi and I are Sotho men. To be a Sotho
man is to take on the responsibilities of the culture. We are commu-
nal in all things and believe in Ancestral alignment.
The young man who recently completed a web design project for me
had an unusual-sounding name. I could not help but question him
about his name, as it was such a challenge for me to pronounce.
My name is Ngqabutho Zondo. My maternal family is from Zimbab-

we, and my paternal family is from South Africa. My paternal grand-
father named me Ngqabutho because he thought I would be an
important person in my community, as this name is given to either a
first-born or a leader of a group. I could have become an elderthat
is what my grandfather wanted for me. But instead, I have moved
away from Africa and followed another path and career. Who knows?
One day I may return to South Africa and follow the path ordained
by my name.
Ngqabutho. An impossible name for Westerners to pronounce, as
it has a click in the first three letters. In Canada, I am called N-g-q
Click, Butho, Zee (short for Zondo), or Nabutho (without
the pronunciation of the click). Some people, like you, try to pro-
nounce my full name. I respond to all of these; and no, I have never
thought of changing my name to make it easier for others. It is a
name of which I am very proud. My surname Zondo is a name that
originates from southern Africa. It is used in specific clans, namely,
Ndebele, Mthiyane, Sokhulu, and Luvuno, which are all based on
the Zulu clan from South Africa. I am Ndebele, a clan constituting
approximately 50 percent of the population within Zimbabwe.
Names are significant. Their meanings are usually well thought
out by parents to reflect the type of future you would like your child
to embody. Today, this type of process is not as common within
64 CHA P TER 6
southern Africa, as newer generations have begun to change cultural-

ly. An interesting fact is that after Zimbabwes independence of
1980, there was a huge boom in naming newborns with traditional
names as a revolutionary assertion of a right and a statement of a
return to autonomous rule. This arose as a reaction to the period
before independence, where black citizens were forced to name
their children with English names due to colonization by the British.
This effectively halted naming according to tradition with the bless-
ings of the Ancestors. The names of my parents are Jerry and Marga-
ret. My mothers maiden name was Chitambo, a Zimbabwe name,
but she adopted my fathers surname of Zondo, as is typically done in
the West.
The North American Ojibway tribe traditionally bases its system of

kinship on patrilineal clans, or dodems, that are passed on from genera-
tion to generation. As a result of European contact followed by the
gradual colonization in the early seventeenth century, there was a
breakdown in tradition and, consequently, considerable damage to the
society of First Nations people. Ensuing legislation resulted in prohibi-
tions and decrees, and censures on land ownership, spiritual practices,
cultural traditions and rituals, and language. Many fundamental aspects
of life were decimated, and residential schools created a tremendously
negative impact on most families, an impact that persists to the present.
My friend Anne, a member of the Anishnaabe, has agreed to speak
with me about names and naming practices among First Nations. As I
wait in the coffee shop where we are to meet, I look up from my book
and see the silhouette of a woman with long hair and curvaceous figure
approach. I know it is she. We embrace warmly. She is excited about
the topic and eager to share her knowledge.
Colonization in Canada, she explains, moved in waves from east
to west so that the impact would be felt differently in central Canada
versus the west coast. In all cases, the federal government, the prov-
inces, and the church decimated the integrity of tribal life as it was
known. Anne tells me that through her own research she has discov-
ered her dodem to be caribou, which, she explains, is a clan signifying
the protector of aspects of social living. Other clans might relate to
medicine or other aspects of the society.
Anne told me how she had found out about this clan. She made an
appointment with a professor of history at the University of Toronto
who had done her doctorate on dodems and showed her the document
of a treaty signed at Rama (the Narrows) in Ontario on June 17, 1852,
which contained two written markings: the signature of James Bigwind,
who was a family relative, and the drawing of a clan symbol. Anne
thought the symbol resembled a deer hoofprint, but the professor ex-
plained that the single cleft in the hoof was characteristic of caribou
tracks. The professor also explained that it was typical of signatures in
treaties to contain these animal paw markings, distinguished by various
claw patterns: Caribou tracks, being circular, typically show two half-
moons with a dewclaw, whereas deer hooves are cloven with sharp
arches that are not round.
Anne was surprised by the reference to caribou in southeastern On-
tario but was told that caribou followed the available supplies of lichen
that grew freely on the rocky granite outcrops of the Canadian shield in
that region, which accounted for their presence so far south. So the
unusual paw print was, in fact, a mark of her caribou dodem.
Her husband, also Ojibway, grew up on a reserve with a traditional
lifestyle of hunting, gathering, and fishing and attained an extensive
knowledge of Native language, culture, and traditions. He does not
know his clan name, however. Anne says that this is an example of a
generational breakdown that had occurred in earlier generations. Anne
told me her story.
My family name is Bigwin, an Anglicized name and likely a modified

translation of Bigwind, which would have been che (big) and nodin
(wind) in Ojibway. Someone must have thought Bigwind sounded
funny and so they dropped the d. One family member is married to a
man whose surname is Starblanket, a direct translation from the
Cree. My Ojibway brother-in-law, a man who grew up on a reserve,
has the surname Jamieson. And my husbands surname is Meawa-
sige, an Ojibway word that means beautiful light.
So there you go: Bigwin, Starblanket, Jamieson, Meawasige. Four
names, four different manifestations of naming. We are all First Na-
tions and our names tell the story of my people in Canada, the First
Nation experience in this countrythe modification, the English
translation, the English name, and the First Nation name without
change or translation. I find it incredible that this phenomenon is
represented in one family.
66 CHA P TER 6
Anne and I continued to speak about ongoing disappointments with

the Canadian government and its rulings. While the federal govern-
ment apologized in 2008 for the excesses and ongoing impact of sexual
and physical abuse in residential schools, Anne clearly was still dis-
turbed by the chronic psycho-social repercussions at both the individual
and the collective level.
I ask Anne to tell me about naming ceremonies. She says that she
can only speak for the Ojibway people, her people, who are part of the
Anishinaabeg, known as the woodland people and identified by the
Algonquin linguistic group.
When a parent or parents want to give their name to a child, they

approach the Medicine People to give them an Indian name. The
child may already have a Canadian name, but the Indian name is to
be used at the persons discretion and always with utmost respect.
Again, due to generational breakdown, today an Elder would be
approached for this task. The Indian name would always come
through a vision, a dream, or through the spirit of the person to be
named. It would never be a random selection or a request by the
parents, and it would always contain a reference to nature in respect
of the importance of interconnectedness and balance in nature.
The naming ceremony is very elaborate, with very explicit rituals
that must be observed. First a fire is lit, as smoke connects Mother
Earth with the Creator. The tobacco, considered a sacred plant used
in all traditional rituals, would be first offered to the Elder who is
conducting the ceremony and a prayer on the name would be said.
The person to be named would then be walked around the feast by
the Elder, who would be talking to him at the same time. This walk-
around signifies the circle of life. Then he would be taken outside for
the sunrise ceremony and the Elder would lift him up in the four
directionsnorth, south, east, westfour being significant in terms
of the four directions, the four winds, the four seasons. At that point,
he would be given his name, and more tobacco would be put on the
fire. There would then be an elaborate feast with traditional food
that would take all night to prepare. The feast would then be con-
sumed and the occasion celebrated with great joy and happiness.
My sons name, which was given to him at three months, was the
name of his paternal great grandfather, and actually the name of the
father of the Elder performing the ritual. This name is Meshkeeg-
wun.
In response to my question about medicine men, Anne was very

succinct. They are the carriers and transmitters of ancestral knowl-
edge, a knowledge that is always oral, never written. They are the inter-
mediaries between Mother Earth and Father Skythe Great Spirit, or
the Creator.
***
After returning from a trip to Russia, I read the memoir The Chuk-
chi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu, a Russian (Siberian) writer. Tucked away on
the northern shores of the Bering Sea, the Chukchi people, resilient
survivors living in the vast Arctic tundra of Siberia, still struggle to
maintain their cultural heritage and mythology. To this day, elaborate
rituals associated with naming may still be performed in this remote
community. Shortly before his murder by a Soviet official, Mletkin, one
of the last remaining shamans of the Chukchi, officiated at the naming
ceremony of Yuris grandson. Mletkin himself had been named at the
time of his birth in 1868 by Kalyantagrau, the unspoken leader and
shaman of the village Uelen.
According to tribal tradition, each newborn, especially if it is a boy, is
endowed and invested with all the aspirations and hopes of the parents,
dreams they had for themselves but were unable to fulfill. Mletkins
own parents had told Kalyantagrau that they wished their sons name to
contain the meaning of all the past family names within it. As the cere-
mony began, the shaman began chanting the history of the family
names, beginning with the words: Each of us, the people of Uelen,
shares a common ancestorthe whale Reu, whose descendant Ermen
led our people to the shingled spit . . . The shaman recounted a short
summary of the family names. Then,
plucking an ember from the fire, he drew a thick black line on the
wailing infants forehead and intoned: I name you Mletkin. I hope
that you will acquire the deep meaning of your name with honor as
you bring it with you into the future, and that you will serve your
people well . . . Mletkin!
Outstretched Wings [a sacred amulet hung suspended by a thin

leather strap from the smokehole of the tent] visibly dipped in the
childs direction.
68 CHA P TER 6
The child abruptly fell silent, as though listening carefully for the
echoes of his name. 1
The chosen name Mletkin meant the crux of time and was intended
to signify something of the infants relationship to his past and future.
According to Chukchi tradition, it is believed that the name chosen
endows the child with something of the knowledge of the ancestors who
bore him before, and will symbolically return him to the tribe.
On the Day of Naming of his own grandson, Mletkin pulled out
Outstretched Wings, the same amulet of carved walrus tusk incised
with shamanic symbols that had been used at his own naming ceremo-
ny, and suspended it from the ceiling of the ceremonial lodge. He knew
that various names would be chanted, invoked, and if the correct name
was announced, the circling talisman would magically incline towards
the newborn.
However, Mletkins children were now full-fledged Soviet citizens
indoctrinated into the culture of their surroundings. Instead of the
more traditional name chosen by their grandfather, they wished to
name their child Lenin, a strong revolutionary name. Mletkin believed
that a names root meaning had the power of ancestral transmission
from previous descendants, be it unconscious or deliberate, and so he
refused this secular Soviet name. Instead he called out various tradi-
tional names, but as each name was invoked, the amulet rotated in an
unchanging circle, as if the gods had deserted the shaman. In despair,
the old wise man spoke deliberately to his grandson, Since the gods
will not hear my pleas, from now on you shall be called Rytkheua
name which means the Unknown! 2
***
In the Mohawk language, Kaha:wi means she carries. It is the
name the Mohawk dancer Santee Smith chose for her modern dance
company, which performs traditional First Nations dance. Smith, the
artistic director, explained this choice of name in the program notes of a
performance I once attended:
It is significant because it was the ancient traditional name of my

family. It is thousands of years old: it was the name of my maternal
grandmother and it is the name of my daughter, and it will be passed
on to other individuals in my family for generations to come. My
name is timeless . . . it spans past, present, future. I am carrying the
history of my family, or that is how I feel it, and I will transmit this to
my children and it will be carried on to their children.
***
Ibrahim al-Koni, a Libyan Tuareg, writes about the desert and the
naming practices of his tribe. A Berber people with a nomadic lifestyle
and a long history of inhabitance in the middle and western Sahara and
the north-central Sahel, the Tuareg continue to sustain themselves
mainly by settled agriculture and nomadic cattle breeding. Unlike in
other North African cultures, Tuareg women traditionally do not wear a
veil, whereas men typically wear the alasho, an indigo-blue veil. The
mens facial covering likely originates from a belief that the action
wards off evil spirits, although it also serves to protect them from the
harsh desert sands. Like the wearing of amulets containing sacred ob-
jects and, more recently, verses from the Quran, taking on the veil is
associated with a rite of passage to manhood. Animistic beliefs infused
with Muslim practices are interwoven with the spiritual fabric of this
pastoral people.
In his book Anubis: A Desert Novel, writer Ibrahim al-Koni speaks
about the quintessential name that must be discovered by each Tuareg.
This particular folk tale describes a Tuareg youth venturing into the
desert on a quest to find his father, a figure he remembers only as a
shadow. A profound encounter with a priestess and an apparition con-
found the youth in his tent on the first day of his solo journey. Unable to
speak, he emits a cry, Iyla! Iyla!
Encircling my body with her arms, my lady replied, He spoke the

prophecy!
The apparition squatting beside the tent post remained quiet for
a long time before marveling, The prophecy!
My compassionate lady rocked me and hugged me to her bosom.
I felt such deep warmth. I can compare it only to the feeling that
overwhelmed me the moment the skys heart opened to disclose the
skys secret and that of her consort the earth. Eventually my lady
responded, He spoke in the Name.
The Name? But what name?
I detected a note of respect in the ladys tone: The Name that
cannot be preceded or followed by falsehood.
But is prophecy of the Name a good or bad omen? The lady did
not reply.
70 CHA P TER 6
She did not reply, because she had decided to take on the mission
of compassion: she began to teach me the names. She called in my
ear as loudly as she could, Rau . . . Rau . . . Rau . . . Rau . . . From
today on your name is Wa. 3 Next she struck her chest with her hand
and howled into my ear, My name is Ma. 4 Turning toward the
ghostly figure squatting beside the post, she shouted the name in my
ear: This fellow is Ba. 5 Then she took two steps towards the en-
trance of the tent and carried me outside to bathe me in a flood of
the light emanating from the amazing golden disk. Finally she
shouted as loudly as she could, This one is nameless, for he is master
of all the names. He is the one you called Iyla. You shall call him
Ragh once your speech clears and you regain an ability to make the
r sound. 6
In this parable, the Tuareg youth discovers the names of the elders,
those significant beings who inhabit his universe and who eventually
will find space in his inner world. At the same time, he must search for
and discover his own name. The quest for his father and his fathers
name becomes entwined with the quest for his own name.
And, as the second part of this book shows, our names are proxies for
all of the good and bad that we can cause and that can happen to us.
Part II
Burden or Blessing
7
THE STRANGE FATE OF NAMES
My field of study as an undergraduate was psychology. While many of

my friends were immersed in great literature, I was holed up in a
laboratory working with mice and rats, performing experiments to fur-
ther the cause of science. It was only later that I entered the clinical
domain of psychology and, after that, the field of psychoanalysis. And it
was when I was engaged in my latest studies that I returned once more
to my literary interests.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a novel by
Laurence Sterne published in the mid-eighteenth century, often is
compulsory reading for university English literature students. It is the
abridged version, a mere single book greatly reduced from the nine-
volume original, that students study, struggling with the English style of
its time. As a satirical work, it spans a history of the comings and goings,
the musings and ruminations, of a gentleman named Tristram.
The first section relates the philosophical viewpoints of Walter
Shandy, his father, a man obsessed with the influence of names on a
persons character, to the point of potentially prejudicing a persons
nature and fortunes. In fact, the word shandy carries the meaning of
half-crazy. To safeguard his son from misfortune, he decreed that the
boy would receive an especially auspicious name, Trismegistus, but, as
luck would have it, or not, the name was distorted when given to the
curate, and so the boy was named Tristram. According to his fathers
theory, this name, being a conflation of Trismegistus, after the esoteric
mystic Hermes Trismegistus, and Tristan, associated with the Latin
73
74 CHA P TER 7
tristis (or sorrowful), doomed him to a life of woe with the curse that he
would never discover the causes of his misfortune.
Neither Tristram nor his father had the benefit of psychoanalysis, a
field still to be developed. However, as astute observers of life, they
understood how names could become imbued with personal meaning
and semantic determination. As his father says, There was a strange
kind of magick bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impressed
upon our character and conduct. 1
Centuries after Cratylus, in Platos dialogue of that name, declared
that names had an inherent, essential quality that made them fitting for
each person, Tristram took this a step further. He implied that names
took on a life of their own when attached to a person and could in some
way direct their future.
***
While we tend to chuckle at the seeming coincidence of names
such as the artisan named Ms. Weaver, the dentist Dr. Molar, the
carpenter Mr. Woodman, the engineer Mr. Steel, the neurosurgeon Dr.
Brain, the oncologist Dr. Hope, or the poet Robert Frost, who wrote
about winter sceneswe are still perplexed by this apparent coinci-
dence. Why are we amused or even startled at such phenomena? Why
does it seem both humorous and presumptuous when we hear a name
connected to a persons profession, personality, or conduct? Why do we
laugh nervously, as if to belie a certain credence in such apparently
preposterous ideas of a fate bound up with a name? Can there be some
semantic coincidence that makes the name of an individual the one into
which we develop and grow?
Determinism is the philosophical concept that all events that occur
in life, including human actions, could not have happened otherwise,
given certain conditions. We can speak of biological and genetic deter-
minism, cultural and social determinism, or even technological deter-
minism. Semantic determinism refers to the notion that semantics, or
the meaning of words (and in this case proper names), have a determin-
ing value on a persons life trajectory and can directly influence mental
life. The slang use of weiner as a reference to penis turned con-
gressman Anthony Weiners sexual adventures on his computer into a
theater of the absurd and left him prey to wave upon wave of sarcastic
comments about his name. An example of semantic determinism!
T H E ST RAN GE FAT E OF N AMES 75
Just as early mans predecessors placed a significant value on the

power of names, psychoanalysts also assign a premium to the function
of the name and its significance in our lives. For us analysts, coinci-
dences are never simply coincidences. In the same way that a common
noun describes a referent, so can a proper name take on a predictive
quality, insinuating itself into the life of its bearer in a very real way.
Already in the early 1900s, psychoanalysts were writing about the
hidden relations between names and occupations as well as between
names and neuroses, 2 according to Karl Abraham, one of Freuds con-
temporaries and colleagues. He also noted that some, instead of repeti-
tion of certain names, characterized by certain qualities, imposed a duty
on subsequent family members when they too have been named in
memory of the first ancestor bearing such a name. As an example,
Abraham cites one of the characters in Goethes novel Elective Affin-
ities, a former priest named Mittler, who took on a role of resolving
disputesmittler being German for go-between or middleman.
In my own practice, a patient whose middle name was the same as a
major figure in German history found herself drawn to writing a disser-
tation on this individuals parents. It was only during her personal analy-
sis that the resemblance of this persons name to her own was what had
propelled her to study his story.
Psychoanalysts from the time of Freud have claimed that man is not
master in his own home. Our conscious ego, that pompous and stub-
born I we parade around with, is not directing the show. Instead, it is
this elusive thing we call the unconscious that is pulling the strings,
making us servant to its directives and commands, even sometimes
inciting us to perform in irrational and unwanted ways.
For Freud, the unconscious is dominated by impulses and drives.
We are all servants to our wishes or drives, caught between the warring
factions of an id, a superego, and an ego. As a result, we are in perpetual
struggle to maintain a balance between our true wishes and our obedi-
ence to well-established parental and social demands. Thanks to that
little egos role as conductor, we usually live with a comfortable degree
of inner truce. In a reformulated version, Lacan would say we must try
to maintain that balance between our desires (what we want) and the
law (what we are permitted and not permitted to do), a tension that
forever places a limit on our total satisfaction and pleasure.
76 CHA P TER 7
The seizing, or taking hold, of our proper name that is assigned or

given from outside ourselves (from our parents) creates the conditions
for its potential to instill a certain deterministic quality, or nomen est
omen, a phrase referring to the commonly held belief in the ancient
world that a persons name indicated or predicted his destiny. It literally
means the name is an omen, the name is destiny, or fate in the
name of.
***
How does this happen? How does the proper name acquire this
power? To understand the valence, or impact, of certain words, we can
consider the distinction between words and signs, signifiers and sig-
nifieds. In linguistic theory, a signifier is a words physical form, a lin-
guistic unit or pattern, such as a succession of speech sounds that con-
veys meaning. A signified is the collection of word meanings associated
with a certain phonological unit of sound. For example, the conceptual
element of a tree (the signified) is directly related to the phonological
element t-r-e-e (the signifier). In everyday speech, we mostly employ
words as signs: The signifier of the image tree is directly related to the
word tree. The signifier and the signified are permanent lovers, glued
together in an initially arbitrary but ultimately fixed bond. Interdepen-
dence breeds reciprocity and durability. Signs are the immutable, uni-
versal word meanings we share with each other in common discourse.
In psychoanalytic theory, however, we say that there is a distinction
between signs and signifiers. Instead of a fixed relationship, the mean-
ing of a signifier is not glued to a word in the same way that the word
table and the letters spelling t-a-b-l-e implicitly conjure up an image
of a surface with legs on which one may write or eat. Signifiers move
and shift; like autonomous buoys, they float in detached form from any
specific referent and are defined independently of any permanent ref-
erence in an initial or inaugural moment. Sovereign in status, signifiers
are characterized by their differences from other signifiers and by their
personalized nature. Signifiers are forever infused with private mean-
ings: My association to the desert is necessarily different from that of
yours. My association to the word peacock may be laced with a partic-
ular memory or memories and imbued with an emotional charge that
may be conscious and unconscious.
What all this means is that, as master signifier, the proper name is
particularly prone to all the interpretations and meanings that one can
ascribe to it. Each of us will read our history and the meaning of our
name in a unique way, interiorizing and ascribing to it our own personal
renderings of meaning. For example, we only have to ask siblings from
the same family to speak about their surname to see the multiple inter-
pretations that can be attributed to it.
***
A given name is rarely given randomly. In the present context, what
is most significant and relevant is the connection between our name
and our parents desire in naming us. Our unique name, be it Samantha
Ellen Chatsworth or Thomas Brandon Duckworth Junior, carries with
it a psychological impact, one that evolves from the one we have been
given to the one we carry and create for ourselves. Either consciously or
unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, as we develop and mature, we are
forced to reckon with that part of our identity over which we had no
choice. The inherited surname carries a valence associated with lineage
(and not parental desire), a fact that does not preclude it from also
becoming bound up with the potential for semantic determinism.
As the example of my patient illustrates, some people become ob-
sessed with the background of a person after whom they have been
named without realizing the connection to their own name. This is
different from the cases of those who research their family tree. My
patient had no inkling of the connection between the names she was
researching and her own name.
In the choice of partners, the determining influence of names can
also be apparent. Some people are suspicious about marrying people
with names they deem to be inauspicious. Others end up marrying
people with names that remind them of their parents, ex-lovers, or
heroes. Some people are suspicious of names that are either the same
or too close in spelling, seeing the names as ominous or ill-omened and
therefore to be avoided at all costs. In these cases, it is never the name
but the meaning imputed to the name that is at stake.
A friend of mine told me of a woman she knew who had fallen in
love with a man she had met serendipitously at a concert. They both
were attending alone due to recent spousal deaths. What started as a
conversation while they stood in line at the refreshment counter at
intermission continued over drinks after the concert and into the wee
hours of the morning. This romance continued in storybook fashion
until a few weeks later when the woman discovered that the name her
78 CHA P TER 7
boyfriend was known by was in fact his middle name, and that his first
name was the name of her deceased husband. Unable to move beyond
this unfortunate coincidence of names, she abruptly terminated the
relationship. My friends comment: You would think she wouldnt have
to worry about calling her husbands name in a moment of abandon!
Salvador Dal, the eccentric Spanish surrealistic painter, scanDAL-
Ized the world with his artwork and multiple acts of provocation. He
frequently made reference to the meanings of both his names: He
interpreted his first name as savior, by which he insisted on his predesti-
nation to save painting, and his surname as desire, an etymological
stretch perhaps connected to delir, the Catalan term for ardent desire.
A desire to save painting. A savior of modern art.
The significance of his name was overdetermined even further. Dal
had a complex relationship with the surrealist French pope and
founder of Surrealism, Andr Breton. Breton and the other surrealists,
irritated by Dals independence and self-appointed autonomy, felt that
his art ran counter to the traditional surrealist methods of automatic
writing and dream associations. In the end, Dal was excommunicated
from the group as a result of a political statement in which he appeared
to be on the wrong side of the art cognoscentithat is, the rich and
famous.
For many of Dals friends and admirers, the break with Breton, who
had been such a mentor and father figure, was the repetition of a
pattern of parental rejection that Dal had experienced with his own
father. Dals father had initially disowned him for living with a divor-
ce, the former wife of the French poet Paul luard (n Eugne mile
Paul Grindel). Having settled accounts with his father for this misde-
meanor, a second and final breach with his father came when Dal
scrawled across a picture depicting the Sacred Heart, Sometimes I spit
on the portrait of my mother for the fun of it.
Dal was known by his friends as Divine Dal, and derogatorily
named Avida Dollars by Breton. Catherine Millet, a student of Dals
writings, writes that this second rejection by an adoptive father may
have been instrumental in pushing Dal to reconstruct his life as a work
of art. As Dal himself wrote: The anagram avida dollars was a talis-
man for me. It rendered the rain of dollars fluid, sweet and monoto-
nous. Someday I shall tell the whole truth about the way in which this
blessed disorder of Danae was garnered. It will be a chapter of a new
book, probably my masterpiece: On the Life of Salvador Dal Consid-

ered as a Work of Art. 3
As Millet notes, the book was never written, but his life as a work of
art definitely was realized. It did become a lifes work, as Dal himself
further describes it: Before, less aware of what was inside me, I felt no
responsibility at all. Today, I pay more attention to my actions and my
thoughts. I measure my ideas against those of the greatest living men.
In my everyday life every action becomes ritual. The anchovy I chew is
in some way a part of the fire that lights me. I am the dwelling of a
genius. 4
On a recent trip to Barcelona, I was introduced to the work of
Antoni Tpies (19232012), a Catalan painter, sculptor, and art theorist
who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation.
Initially influenced by the surrealistic works of Mir and Klee, Tpies
eventually evolved his own style of painting in which he incorporated
nonartistic materials such as clay and marble dust, paper, string, and
rags into huge wall canvases. Visiting the Fundaci Antoni Tpies, I was
struck by the artists comment, I have come to appreciate the strange
fate of my namefor tapia means wall, the bearer of his huge works.
The genuine unconscious impact of the name was only discovered after
the fact, when the artist could reflect on the coincidence between his
name and his artwork.
***
While my name Mavis has the dictionary meaning of a bird, it was
my surname Himes, derived from the Hebrew word chaim (life), that
I find myself considering. Those of my close friends who spent their
twenties and thirties living in Israel continue to write my name with the
Hebrew spelling and I am always surprised to see it written that way, as
it reminds me of my names literal meaning.
Life. I have been fortunate to enjoy all that life can offer: health,
education, family, work. I am engaged in activities and explore my
interests that are creative, stimulating, and life affirming. My adventur-
ous spirit has brought me into contact with people and places around
the globe. I share my life with people I love and cherish. Because of my
history of work with cancer patients, I treasure each day, knowing my
time on this earth is limited. I value life-enhancing causes; I respect the
life of others. Lchaim is the blessing we Jews say over food and wine.
Yes, to life. The names potential to determine the fate of an individual
80 CHA P TER 7
and to direct his or her history in a particular direction is certainly a

curious phenomenon. And yet it is this quality, this power of the name
to direct our life, that gives this word a unique standing in our lifes
narrative. The Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero notes in a book on
narratives and storytelling about oneself that our name, in the absence
of any preordained or known qualities, somehow becomes the phonet-
ic glue of our identity, sealing our biographical and autobiographical
stories. 5
8
TRANSMISSION AND INHERITANCE
Transmission and inheritance: a duo of terms. What can we say about

the difference between these terms? We tend to think of inheritance on
the side of passivity: We receive, we are given a history and a genetic
foundation; we choose neither. An early fifteenth-century term, which
means the receiving by hereditary succession, inheritance descends
from the old French term enheriter (make heir, appoint as heir),
which descends from the late Latin term inheriditare (also to appoint
as heir). Our inheritance, like our name, is prescribed to us and prede-
termined for us by someone else, for better or for worse.
As for transmission, we view it as active: We transmit a lesson, a skill,
a value, or a belief, although it may also be a silent, invisible initiative.
As family members, we all partake in this complementary dynamic
of receiving an inheritance and transmitting a legacy: As children we
inherit, and as parents we transmit. By definition, at least two individu-
als are required: the one receiving and the one sending. Mentoring
relationships, such as between student and teacher or apprentice and
master, can be viewed in the same way.
***
Most of us consider our inheritance in terms of the genetic makeup
we carry from our biological parents. My birthmark and skin texture,
my freckles, and my coloring are genetic, the transmission of a biologi-
cal blueprint encoded in my body.
The lines on my forehead and at the sides of my eyes are now
engraved on my face. Between my brows, an increasingly deep set of
81
82 CHA P TER 8
furrows. These fissures record the expressions of my lifes escapades.

Creases punctuate my eyes like the smile lines of my father. The faint
trace of a vertical line down my back from between my shoulder blades
to three inches above my tailbone documents the faded scar of a sur-
gery for scoliosis, a condition that I inherited from my father (at least
according to family lore). The thin skin and raised veins on my hands
are the genetic gifts I received from my mother and maternal grand-
father. I wear my history on my body: They represent the tattoos of a
life not only acquired through a life lived, but also inherited from birth.
I see in my niece the smile of my sister, the raised eyebrow of my
brother-in-law, and the big feet of my uncle. I discover in my friends
traces of their siblings and parents. Our bodies do not lie; without
surgery, we cannot bury the physically inscribed traces of our immedi-
ate family and distant relatives.
Sometimes, genetic history operates on a hidden level, concealing a
particular divergence of cellular anomalies or a perfect storm of micro-
scopic DNA: the unexpected emergence of a rogue gene, a grandmoth-
ers high blood pressure, an as yet undiagnosed hereditary heart condi-
tion, a pelvic bone malformation.
Families do not always know or share their genetic legacy with chil-
dren. Sometimes a family history is revealed only after the diagnosis of a
medical illness. One of my patients was diagnosed with lymphoma at
the age of forty-three; it was only after his diagnosis that he learned of
his fathers treatment for the same disease at the age of twenty. A family
secret exposed. Genetic inheritance has no respect for personal privacy.
The unwanted inheritance, the disfigurement, the willfully banished
inevitably return.
If we are so blessed or favored, we may inherit property and worldly
goods, the material inheritance that typically follows a family death. Or
we may be fortunate enough to inherit a family treasure or heirloom, a
memento infused with nostalgia and memory. These remnants some-
times become amulets that link us to a departed loved one. Who does
not know someone who has traveled halfway across the globe to find the
navy and burgundy scarf that warmed the neck of a loved one or the
whereabouts of a particular family treasure?
We inherit the olive-colored sweater, the silver earrings with the
amber stones, the Murano glass vase bought on a Venetian escapade,
the photographs from Bucharest and Barcelona, the butane lighter em-
T RAN SM I SSI ON AN D I N H ERITA NCE 83
bossed with an engraving of the family name. When my own father

died, I inherited his gold watch, a hand-woven silk tie, a pair of his
cufflinks, his caramel-colored sweater, and three passport photographs.
We also inherit the family archive, a storage box of memories that
connect one generation to the next: the stories, the legends, the family
secrets, the misconstrued gossip, the revered lieswhat is talked about
and what is whispered; what is concealed and what is revealed. The
rituals of family gatherings and holidays are key opportunities for the
transmission of family memory and genealogical knowledge. These ritu-
als offer a symbolic structure for a family to situate itself in its past and
to construct a representation of its own history, past, present, and fu-
ture.
Remember the time Grandma argued with Mom over the color of
the shirt Dad wore to that Christmas party?
A war of colors. What was the big deal?
Must have been the principle of it. You know Grandma always had
to have the last word.
Right. Stubbornness is an inherited trait. Its called the MacIntosh
gene.
We also inherit certain patterns of behavior and rituals, idiosyncratic
traits and subtle preferences that are passed seamlessly from generation
to generation. These marks of family identification are insidious and
tacit and are always beyond our conscious awareness. These are the
breeding grounds of prejudice and racism, rivalry and family feuds, that
become linked to family name and honor. To carry a certain name can
also be to acquire a readymade and particular code of ethics.
***
The Old World was saturated with the names of nobility and dynas-
tic families stretching back centuries to a time when church and state
were twins questing for powersometimes in concert, sometimes as
rivals. A certain deference to those endowed with wealth through inher-
itance was given to the kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, who
ruled the lands. Not only were nobility identified by their family name,
but they were also distinguished by their lands and possessions. The
feudal world was like a large village with certain names that dominated
the landscape, ruling over those marked by a single name. Long-dead
ancestors retained a living authority over successive offspring.
84 CHA P TER 8
During the medieval period, the impact of ancestry on ones charac-

ter and behavior was continuously reinforced. Consider the Crusades of
the twelfth century in which recruits were expected not only to remem-
ber but also to pay homage to the achievements of their ancestors
through battle. In the review of a recent publication on the Crusades
and family memory, Nicholas Paul points out that Pope Eugenius re-
minded young men to salute and pay tribute to their ancestors who had
conquered the Holy Land half a century earlier: God forbid the brav-
ery of the fathers will prove diminished in the sons. 1
Explicit appeals and demands by clergy and state were typical of this
period, when the aristocratic cultures of Western Europe conditioned
the choices of offspring, and, in particular, sons. Paul mentions that
deference to dead elders satisfied two important factors in the determi-
nation of elite status: the obligations of inherited nobility and the need
to demonstrate personal prowess, or probitas. 2 In this plea for the
maintenance of tradition, sons were expected to honor their ancestors
by joining the ongoing battlefields of their fathers and grandfathers. In
this way, their actions would strengthen that linked chain of family
valor. These times demanded compliance of filial devotion and piety,
and no exceptions would be tolerated.
In the Old World, distant ancestry was also the basis for establishing
title and property rights, status and privilege. Castles and manors,
heraldic badges and pennants, were all the symbols of prominent family
names. Relatives were commemorated for their virtues or vices and
occupied the familys collective memories in narratives of honor, brav-
ery, and duty. As a result, ancestry was prescriptive, determining the
actions of offspring. Not only were wealth and power to be sustained
during ones lifetime, but, as dictated by custom, they were also to be
transferred in ones old age.
***
Shakespeares King Lear struggles to determine which of his three
daughters will inherit his wealth. Misguided, seduced, and betrayed by
the alluring words of Regan and Goneril, he misinterprets the silence of
his favored Cordelia and misdirects his anger at what he perceives as
this most beloved ones rejection. As Shakespearean scholar Stephen
Greenblatt points out in Will in the World:
In the culture of Tudor and Stuart England where the old demanded
the public deference of the young, retirement was the focus of par-
ticular anxiety. It put a severe strain on the politics and psychology of
deference by driving a wedge between statuswhat Lear at societys
pinnacle calls the name, and all the additions to a king (1.1.136)
and power. In both the state and the family, the strain could some-
what be eased by transferring power to the eldest legitimate male
successor . . . 3
The dilemma for Lear, who could not rely on a son or male heir, was
the question of family transmission. Which of his three daughters could
he trust and rely on to bestow his family property in return for the
provision of food, shelter, and clothing?
The importance of status was not unfamiliar to William Shakespeare
and his father. In order to increase the honor of his own name and the
social ranking for his children and grandchildren, John Shakespeare
applied to the College of Heralds for a coat of arms. While blood deter-
mined ones entitlement to the elite status of a gentleman, it was always
possible to acquire, indirectly, the necessary qualifications. After an
initial failure, Johns application was subsequently reviewed and ap-
proved, due to the intervention of his son. By helping his father, Will
also benefited, raising himself and his children to a gentlemans status.
Will had by this time no doubt played gentlemen onstage, and he
could carry off the part outside the playhouse as well, but he and others
would always know he was impersonating someone he was not. Now he
had the means to acquire legitimately, through the offices his father
once held, a role he had only played. Now he could legally wear, outside
the theater, the kinds of clothes he had donned for the stage. For a man
singularly alert to the social hierarchyafter all, he spent most of his
professional life imagining the lives of kings, aristocracy, and gentry
the prospect of this privilege must have seemed sweet. He would sign
his last will and testament William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-
Avon in the county of Warwick, gentleman. In Elizabethan times, this
transformational step of social identity was paramount. Even more sig-
nificant is the motto chosen by Will to accompany the shield and crest:
Non sanz droict, Not without right. 4
***
The New World did not share the same history of names associated
with a long lineage of pedigree, class, and status. However, as described
86 CHA P TER 8
by Franois Weil, in Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America,

many Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century became
obsessed with pedigree, seeking an individual and collective connection
to England or other civilized nations in Europe. Lacking a distinct
national character in the New World, New Englanders spoke of their
Puritan stock, New Yorkers of their descent from distinguished Dutch
families, and Virginians of their Cavalier associations, even if it took
fraudulent claims to do so.
Weil also points out how this search for pedigree took a nasty turn in
the direction of eugenics, or the science of better breeding. While
Anglo-Saxons were considered to be at the peak of the racial scale,
scholars began noting, with favor, Aryan and Teutonic influences on
American culture. Prominent scientists soon began urging genealogists
to consider their work from the perspective of genetics rather than
lineage, with clear supremacist and racial implications. Eventually, ge-
nealogical research began to focus on family identity rather than pedi-
gree. However, social ranking and status still seem to make their ap-
pearance in the media.
The family history of the prominent, award-winning Canadian artist
Michael Snow, according to a magazine article, includes these words:
He has a prestigious lineage: his father, Gerald Bradley Snow, was a
civil engineer and the grandson of former Toronto mayor James Beaty;
his mother, the haughtily mannered and fabulously named Marie-An-
toinette Franoise Carmen Lvesque, was the daughter of a former
Chicoutimi mayor named Elzear Lvesque. 5
***
Today the rivalry over status and class structure, once the domain of
royalty alone, continues to make its appearance around the globe.
While fewer monarchies continue to exist, their popularity swells with
media events, such as the weddings of royal couples or the death of a
popular icon like Princess Diana. Today, competition and rivalry over
social status and power in the current climate are not played out as in
Elizabethan England, when the public image and status of a particular
family name were embellished by emblems and insignia, emblazoned
flags, coat of arms, shields, and other personal items, but in the acquisi-
tion of consumer items.
Well-known haute couture designers, expanding beyond the walls of
their fashion houses, have begun to lend their name to other fields,
notably awards of achievement in the arts. Recently, the Ralph Lauren

Corporation became one of the national sponsors of the PBS Master-
piece series, lending the name Ralph Lauren to such popular period
dramas as Downton Abbey, Silk, and Sherlock.
In Toronto a growing list of urban buildings reads like a bulletin of
financial success stories. In todays global economy, financial institu-
tions have replaced the names of individuals whose hard-won financial
achievements were rewarded with the privilege of naming rights. In the
landmark days of Torontos development, the iconic names Sam
Schneiderman (Sam the Record Man), John Lyle, and Bluma Appel
were associated with many of the arts buildings of the downtown core.
In the late forties, Edwin (Ed) Mirvish, a financial wholesaler, phi-
lanthropist, and theatrical impresario, began his adventures in the To-
ronto real estate market, eventually purchasing many buildings that he
converted into theaters that line King Street in the entertainment dis-
trict, as well as Mirvish Village, the Markham Street block of restau-
rants and boutiques. The son of Ukrainian (paternal) and Austrian (ma-
ternal) parents, he had been given the name Yehuda, but at his cousins
insistence, he changed it to the more Anglo-sounding name of Edwin.
His famous bargain department store, Honest Eds, his first major pur-
chase, once straddled an entire city block, welcoming immigrants and
students, the young and the old, through its glass doors.
Until recently, the CIBC and TD Bank buildings and the Scotia
Plaza and Olympia York buildings all vied to be the tallest in Toronto,
yet today major hotels, such as the Shangri-La, are competing for this
measure of greatness.
Name-changing on several buildings in the financial district, such as
Brookfield Place, attest to the growing competition for immortality
through naming. In 1960 Toronto opened the doors of the first art
centers funded by the generous philanthropist E. P. Taylor, then head
of the OKeefe Brewing Company and Argus Corporation. One of
them, the OKeefe Centre, became the Hummingbird Centre thirty
years later, in 1996, when Hummingbird Communications Limited do-
nated $5 million to undertake a number of improvements and renova-
tions. Then again in 2007, Sony bought the naming rights for the build-
ing; today, Torontos cultural elite are welcomed into the interior of the
Sony Centre for the Performing Arts for their entertainment needs.
***
88 CHA P TER 8
While the naming privileges of corporations vie today for pride of

place on the boulevards of the downtown core and its expanding cen-
ters, there was a time in the history of this relatively young country
when the inhabited world grew through the daring and hard-won ef-
forts of its early pioneers and explorers. Place names in this New World,
in particular the remote northern regions of the Yukon and the North-
west Territories, derived from the leaders of expeditions cutting across
great land masses and waterways: Graham, Vanier, Bathurst, Cornwall,
and Brock all have islands to memorialize their efforts. Separating and
indenting the islands are a labyrinth of channels, straits, and bays that
also bear the names of those menadmirals, commanders, and pa-
tronswho arrived on wooden ships from far afield to probe an inhos-
pitable landscape.
In an attempt to parade success, wealth, and status, todays most
successful personalities in the entertainment, sports, and fashion worlds
frequently brand paraphernalia with their own names. In the scent
industry, we can find Seduction in Black by Antonio Banderas, Love
and Glamour by Jennifer Lopez, Heiress by Paris Hilton, White Di-
amonds by Elizabeth Taylor, Midnight Fantasy by Britney Spears.
After all, we all know that naming privileges, as a universal form of
transmission, are intended to guarantee eternal remembrance. We rec-
ognize certain philanthropic trust funds and foundations, such as the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Laidlaw Foundation, the Molson Founda-
tion. Not only do they provide much-needed monetary support, but
they also ensure permanent testimonial and tribute to their donors.
Similarly, names assigned to museums, art galleries, hospital wings, and
public auditoriums are all contemporary means of establishing perpetu-
al acknowledgment and homage by those with financial resources.
***
Yet what is the impact on society of this trend in name-changing
from the personal to the collective? Are there social implications or
ramifications of this sliding chain of names? Does this trend in some
way reflect a devaluation of the individual swallowed by corporate inter-
ests? Will future generations have a different perception of their city if
the names of its founding fathers and mothers have been erased from
the architectural landscape? We can only speculate as to the impact of
this trend. We will undoubtedly have to wait for future generations to
examine these questions.
In spite of the newer styles of social status, social ranking, and nam-
ing privileges today, the significance of family loyalty has never faded.
We have seen how, in the distant past, transmission of a family or clan
name demanded honoring and obeying the laws and customs associated
with that name, and how, over time, on a collective level, this loyalty
was transferred to the state and its rulers. And it is in the name of those
titled individuals that battles over land and territory haunt the history of
society.
In The Tigers Wife, a novel set in a mythic, unnamed Balkan coun-
try, the protagonist, a young doctor, reflects on war and territory:
When the fight is about unravellingwhen it is about your name,

the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your
name to some landmark or eventthere is nothing but hate, and the
long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, metic-
ulously, by the ones who went before them. The fight is endless, and
comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise
those who hope against it. 6
Ta Obreht, the young American author of this novel, was born in

war-torn Belgrade. In her book she reminds us that hate and rage,
fomenting into battle, always develop when the conflict centers on
names and the places in which ones blood has been spilt. The attach-
ment between name and landmark, name and territory, is a powder keg
of bloody dissension and strife that we see around the globe, both in
mans collective past history and continuing to the present.
Regimes that rule through intolerance and autocracy demonstrate a
perversion of the power of the name. Territorial wars, which have tar-
nished and haunted human history from time immemorial, are all bat-
tles over title and name. This belongs to me, my family, my tribe, my
history. Nationalism over homeland is a vestige of clan loyalty and hon-
or. Xenophobia, the step-maiden of familial and social inclusivity and
exclusivity, relies on the inheritance of bloodlines to maintain national
purity.
In this context, we can retrieve and insert the notions of nomen and
nomos, those etymological carriers of the name and the law, whose
twinning may provide an explanation. After all, it is the division of
property, the physical attachment to this named land won and lost by
bloodshed, that foment and incite these interminable battles.
9
WHO WE ARE IS ALWAYS THERE
I remember the repeated times in my childhood that my mother

grabbed my little hand and dashed across the street and the words that
accompanied the maneuver: Mavis, never cross in the middle of a
street; always look both ways. Listen to my words, Mavis; now you dont
copy my behavior. As an adult, I whiz through empty intersections
paying no heed to the traffic lights; I jaywalk in foreign cities; I impa-
tiently edge forward in crowded queues. You are your mothers daugh-
ter, she chides me today. According to her, I have inherited her bad
behavior.
Transmission occurs in the convictions and principles, the ethics and
significance, of our moral faith and the body of knowledge we each
acquire through a lifetime of living. This transmission happens within
families seamlessly and in silence. It is born in the daily ritual, the
nonverbal gestures, the spoken as well as the unspoken word. This
silent transmission is a powerful force in our early experiences, creating
powerful identifications. These are the words and ideas that enter
through the porous surface of our minds and penetrate into our darkest
recesses.
The obligation we feel to live up to our name, be it a name of fame
or obscurity, bespeaks the ongoing nature of social ideals and conven-
tion, the realm of the shoulds and should nots that we all espouse. For
better or for worse, we are all subjects of identification; we all conform
to certain social expectations, certain belief systems and values im-
91
92 CHA P TER 9
parted to us by those significant others who have been part of our

formation.
Standards of social convention, like fashion, are ever evolving. Just as
pants were not to be worn by women downtown during my childhood
years but pantsuits became de rigueur as a work uniform in my adoles-
cence, so do family mores modify over time.
We expect a decorum and demeanor of public personalities; we
make assumptions about how a Rothschild, Trudeau, Kennedy, or
Roosevelt should behave in social situations, which is why the paparazzi
strive to put them in a compromised light. In the sphere of child rear-
ing, far from the cameras glare, parents are prey to the pressure and
expectations of social etiquette. After all, a well-behaved child reflects
on a parents success.
You cant do that, Susie; after all, youre a Watson. It is important
to most families that its members be seen as well behaved, well-turned
out, and well-spoken, however different what this means may be from
family to family. We must always be on our best behavior.
Or, with unabashed affectation, I have heard parents say, We dont
do that in our family. We are the Smiths.
We dont eat like that!
Now dont forget who you areyou are a Robertson. So you go out
and show them!
You know that that is totally unacceptable in this family. After all,
we have to keep up our family nameI cant have you traipsing around
downtown looking like that!
The humor slips through in the pretentiousness of these statements.
And yet pedigree is of utmost importance to many families. Expecta-
tions, values, and beliefs are inevitably handed down and revisited on
the children. In the narcissistic fantasies of parents, their children are a
reflection of their achievement and accomplishment. Even in the Mafia
family so well documented by the television series The Sopranos, we
see a particular code of ethics being enacted by the family.
Our inheritance also includes the mythical and powerful claims of
another type of behavior: those personality traits that we wish to fob off
onto some other family member. I remind my patients that there are no
genetic markers for character traits. But still they insist: I swear my
husband inherited his explosive temper from his father.
I know my sister got her stubborn streak from our mother.
WH O WE ARE I S ALWAY S THERE 93
My grandfather was always scared of airplanes. Im sure thats why

my uncle wont travel.
While my father stressed our family name as a link to my distant
ancestral history with its cultural and historical roots, it was my mother
who brought my sister and me back to the present. It was she who
reminded us of certain day-to-day social conventions and behaviors, the
canon of implicit and explicit dos and donts we were expected to fol-
low.
***
In my family, what it was to be a Jew was not passed on wordlessly,
and yet it was without sets of injunctions, threats, or decrees. It was
communicated through certain rituals marked with a regularity that
made them special: holiday celebrations, Shabbat meals, rituals of food
preparation, my mothers Hadassah meetings. The year was punctuat-
ed, in a cyclical manner, by the agricultural festivalsthe Feast of Un-
leavened Bread, the Feast of the Harvest (Shavuot), and the Feast of
Ingathering (Sukkot)and the three reverential holidays of Rosh Ha-
shanah, Yom Kippur, and Pesach.
The patronymic Himes, in spite of its diminutive spelling, also con-
tained within it a shorthand of behavior, a particular code of ethics with
no need for elaboration. In this way, what distinguished us from them
was already inscribed in our surname.
I was made aware of my difference from other children and adults
who did not share in our religious and cultural tradition: These differ-
ences were always pointed out and prefaced by such statements as We
dont do that or That is what they do, referring, for example, to the
celebration of Christmas or the eating of certain foods. This other world
straddled my own as I played with all the children in the schoolyard;
entertained my friends with lemonade, ice cream, and cookies; and
shared intimate games of show-and-tell. Yet I was aware of a difference
that I could not articulate but which entered my being; I learned by
osmosis of a great divide that separated my world from that of certain
others, a separation that could not be easily crossed in those formative
years.
On the other hand, I had always known that my fathers family had
been Orthodox and that my father had resisted the tight reins of my
grandfathers demands. There had been the stories of how he and his
brothers had to trudge through the snow-covered streets of downtown
94 CHA P TER 9
Montreal at dawn to attend the early services of a local synagogue. And

there had been the hushed silence around the restrictions, rigidity, and
harsh discipline of that household. Perhaps as a result of the enforced
reverence of the Mosaic code, my father did not maintain a religious
outlook or insist on regular synagogue attendance. I remember his mut-
ters of vitriol as we strolled through Clanranald Park against the ultraor-
thodox Jews for parading their religion in outlandish dress. The dis-
quietude and conflict that I sensed in him bewildered meand settled
within me.
On my maternal side, it was my grandmothers presence and subse-
quent residence in our house that reinscribed the rituals of kashruth
(dietary laws) and Yiddishkeit (sense of Jewishness) within the home.
Friday nights were infused with ritualistic splendor. The smell of chick-
en rubbed tenderly with a paste of oil, garlic, paprika, and salt roasting
in the oven; a cake plate adorned with the deep amber of honey cake;
my grandmothers embroidered tablecloth inherited from her mother,
who had hidden it in the folds of a suitcase she carried from Bukovina.
Holidays were moments of family reunion.
What was passed on, aside from these rituals, and aside from the
basic moral ethos, was a message about the way I conducted myself.
And all the ways of imparting knowledge and attitudesthrough a
shrug, a word, a gesture, through touch and the body, in words spoken
in the living momentwere communicated by my parents in a form
that was fleeting and evanescent.
And it was through this unwritten code, more powerful than any
written text about how to live or what to believe in, that I learned what
it meant to be a Himes and a Jew. These fleeting words and gestures
became written into my life, into my body, and into how I lived out the
script of my life. My outer life in no way reflected this inner text. My
assimilated life in an urban center hid these earliest influences. They lay
dormant under a blanket of my intellectual acquisitions, to be chal-
lenged and analyzed as I became an adult.
***
While we all carry a desire to speak our own voice and create our
own signature, consciously or unconsciously acknowledging a debt to
our family history, we sometimes cling to a wish for parental answers
and a quick and easy solution to lifes challenges.
WH O WE ARE I S ALWAY S THERE 95
I am reminded of a patient, a young woman who had always strug-

gled with her relationship with her mother, who died during the course
of our work together. Alternating between poise and frustration, calm
and anxiety, one day she reminisced about the days just before her
mother had given way in her brief battle with cancer:
When my mother died, I had wanted her to pass on some teachings,

some words of wisdom, something that would be the opposite of all
the demands she made on me, all the insignificant lessons with which
she tried to brainwash me. I suppose I wanted her blessings on my
life. And I wanted an answer, a truth that she could pass on to me.
But instead, my mother looked at me on her deathbed, frail and
forlorn like a pixie under a mountain of blankets, and all she did was
shrug her shoulders. Imaginea shrug of her shouldersthat was
what I was left with. All of her life, so much advice and warning and
teaching, and then a lousy shrug. A shrug open to interpretation.
At first I thought, its like shes saying to me, Whats it all about?
like the song from the sixties film Alfie. But then I thought, no, shes
admitting something she could never admit to me before: I dont
have the answer, I dont have any answers. I simply made it up as I
went along. I interpreted this as her failure. My mother, a woman
who always dictated what, when, where, and how. And at the last
moment, nothing. I am left with nothing, a shoulder shrug. This is
my inheritanceher failure. Now what do I do?
***
In a remarkable book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, a memoir by a
British ceramicist, we learn not only what has been revealed, but also
what remains to be discovered or uncovered about ones inheritance.
The spoken and the unspoken, the revealed and the concealed. Ed-
mund Arthur Lowndes de Waal inherited a family collection of 264
wood and ivory Japanese carvings called netsuke. With the weighted
gift of this inheritance, he began a search to uncover the significance of
these objects for different family members over the years. In doing so,
he also discovered the rich story of his family. His search begins in
Berdichev, a city in one of the provinces of northern Ukraine, and lands
him in the Paris of the late 1880s, fin-de-sicle Vienna and beyond, and
eventually to Tokyo, where he encounters the legends of his great-uncle
Ignace, familiarly referred to as Iggie.
96 CHA P TER 9
Edmunds father, the Reverend Dr. Victor de Waal, who was mar-
ried to Esther Moir, eventually became Dean of Canterbury Cathedral.
It was Edmunds grandmother Elisabeth, a member of the wealthy and
established Ephrussi family, who broke the familys Jewish tradition by
marrying Hendrik de Waal, a Dutch businessman who moved to Eng-
land and from whom Edmund received his distinctly Dutch family
name.
In an interview with Eleanor Wachtel, the host of the CBC Radio
show Writers & Company, Edmund acknowledged the reticence he
had felt at the outset of his writing regarding his family quest. He did
not know what secret or surprise, mishaps or skeletons, he might come
across. In fact, as he admits, he discovered an array of characters he had
never known, a history of financial success and artistic opulence, a com-
munity of trustworthy friends and emerging twentieth-century artists, a
legacy of remarks and silences, some hidden encounters, and other
public facts.
In that radio interview, I discovered an interesting detail that had
been deliberately omitted from the book. As Dean of Canterbury, his
father had been required to sit for a picture to hang along with the
other portraits in the collection of the deanery. A Viennese cousin who
had known Victor, Edmunds father, since childhood, requested to be
the one to paint his picture on the condition that Victor not see the
portrait until its completion. Edmunds father agreed. When the por-
trait was finally unveiled, there must have been a gasp among those
assembled, as the Jewish Viennese cousins rendering of the Reverend
de Waal revealed the dean as a rabbi. In the interview, Edmund chuck-
led and said: Who you are is always there. An inheritance of the name
that hid the truth as the truth was hidden in the name. The truth of
ones family story is waiting to be revealed.
The inheritance of the name can be modified and changed but never
forgotten. It always lies waiting for its truth to be revealed by a family
member at some point. As I placed the book on my bookshelf, I saw the
subtitle I had not noticed: A Hidden Inheritance.
10
THE FAMILY TREE OF LIFE
Acer saccharinum. A magnificent silver maple tree stands outside the

window of my home office. It would take four adults with outstretched
arms to encircle its trunk. At least five hundred people could be pro-
tected from the suns rays by the scope of its crown. I try to imagine the
root structure buried beneath the surfacean underground network of
canals thrusting downwards and outwards.
My neighbor refers to this imposing tree as the Tree of Life. My
husband calls it The Nine Sisters because of its nine major trunk off-
shoots and because the cemetery in which it stands is the burial ground
for an order of Catholic nuns. This grand maple stands near the eastern
side of St. Michaels Catholic Cemetery, well-hidden in the center of
Toronto. Inaugurated in 1855, it is now the resting place for over 29,000
individuals, many of them immigrants who had fled the Irish potato
famine and fell victim to the 19181919 Toronto flu epidemic. The
tombstones form an irregular pattern of tall Celtic crosses and spires
alternating with marble, slate, and limestone gravestones. A cluster of
small cross markers commemorate an entire order of nuns. On the
eastern side, a mortuary vault interrupts the horizon with its domed top,
a temporary resting place where dead bodies were stored in the snowy
winter months. An inactive cemetery, this silent park of the dead is one
of many graveyards telling a story of local history.
In A Thousand Plateaus, a massive treatise on capitalist society,
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, two radical twentieth-century think-
ers who devoted their lives to developing subversive ideas, write, The
97
98 CHA P TER 10
Western world has an arborescent structure . . . It is odd how the tree

has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought from botany
to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, all of
philosophy . . . : the root-foundation, Grund, racine, fondement. 1
Yes, the maple outside my office symbolizes our relationship to
knowledge and to one another. An ever-expanding layer on top with its
outer beauty that sheds foliage in the fall but returns each spring: a
sturdy trunk that acts as a conduit between the upper and lower, the
visible and the invisible, the inside and the outside; and a vast under-
ground of support, an anchor to support the weight of its crown. I could
go further and say that the tree represents man with its head, arms, and
legs.
For Antoni Plcid Guillem Gaud i Cornet, more popularly known as
Gaud, the renowned Catalan architect and patron saint of Barcelona,
the cypress tree with its permanent foliage and straight form pointing
upwards to the celestial bodies represents the tree of life. And so he
crowned the Sagrada Famlia, his magnificent yet uncompleted master-
piece, with a cypress, aimed towards the heavens and filled with doves
like angels, fluttering in its foliage. Gaud, with his deep respect and
reverence for the lessons of nature, once remarked, The tree near my
workshop is my teacher.
As I look out the window at my stalwart muse, I realize that in my
imaginary painting of the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life reigns
supreme, center stage in the canvas. What better universal icon of lifes
interconnectedness, of the cosmic symbol of immortality and a meta-
phor of humankinds common descent? Is it the acacia tree of Iusaaset
from which the Egyptians believed that Isis and Osiris emerged? Or is it
the Christian tree of life bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit
every month (Rev. 22:12) and whose leaves are said to be used for the
healing of all nations? Or is it the mystical symbol of Kabbalistic Juda-
ism with its ten outspread branches directing us towards the path to
God? Unlike the rendition in Genesis, I would paint the Tree of Knowl-
edge of Good and Evil off to a side. Hidden from immediate view, this
tree with its bountiful fruit beckons and calls. It tempts and attempts to
be seen, to be touched, to be tasted. The tree of knowledge promises
the secrets of all knowledge.
***
T H E FAM I LY T RE E OF LI FE 99
Trees are a lifeline in the history of mans civilization: the first rub-
bings of twigs and stems for warmth and fire, the nourishment for our
food supply, the source of products for private and commercial usage.
From birth to death, we are sustained by the generosity of our leafy
companions. It is the trees trunk that provides us with lifes materials:
the planks of rocking cradles; the parchment of Lucretiuss De Rerum
Natura and Shakespeares Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello; the paper of
the Toronto Star and the Manchester Guardian, the New York Times
and the Washington Post, the Encyclopedia Britannica and the col-
lected works of Freud and Lacan; hardwood floors and baseball bats;
violins and pianos; and the envelope of wood coffins that accompany us
in death.
In the cemetery where my father is buried, in a French-dominated
quartier of Montreal, there are few trees and no bushes; only grasses
and rows of tombstone markers crowd the land. Sometimes when I visit
his gravestone, I see a line of pebbles sitting on the black granite and
know that my father has been visited by an anonymous guest. My
fathers body lies buried in a coffin of mahogany, wood that will deteri-
orate with time so that he will return to the earth. When I am there, I
sometimes read the names of the men and women who are my fathers
burial neighbors and imagine that they have become friends in some
otherworldly universe.
The family tree is like a family romance, says one of my patients.
It always begins a question: Who am I? Where did I inherit these big
feet? Who was my grandfathers twin that we can never speak about?
Questions about our family tree may also be a search for an exotic
past: the discovery of a royal lineage, an encounter with a family secret,
the unearthing of a distant relative. For those engaged in family re-
search, each additional detail uncovered has the potential for an open-
ing into an exciting labyrinth of blind alleys, dead ends, and chance
meetings. We search for a connection, a surprise, a discovery of an
unknown fact. Oh my god, my sister really was adopted! We search for
an explanation, a causal connection. Oh, so he had pointy ears and a
Roman nose. I really am my fathers daughter.
We search for a reality check on the fiction we have constructed. I
think I am really the bastard child of an affair my mother had before
she was married. We search with a sense of fascination and curiosity,
with a hope of possible intrigue and a frisson of mystery. Like reading a
100 CHA P TER 10
detective novel, we follow the clues and cues to a city across an ocean
that was once behind the Iron Curtain, to a foreign village or hamlet, to
a seaside town on the Mediterranean. We are hoping to be surprised,
maybe shocked. Yet we are never prepared for the tragedy of the un-
foreseen: illness, premature death, wars.
We search out our history in spite of the cost, effort, and unpredict-
abilityor perhaps because of it. For some, it becomes a lifelong pro-
ject; for others, it is a rather peculiar piece of history. But there it is: a
piece of paper with a diagram fanning out in all directions with names
in little boxes floating above the ground in the shape of a tree or botani-
cal graph, with names hanging off vertical and horizontal lines as on a
clothesline.
***
I met a woman who had been trying to find out about her family
line. She soon was stymied by the number of times the spelling of her
name had been changed. As she was about to abort her project, she was
contacted by a man who identified himself as her deceased mothers
great-uncle. It turned out that he had been in hiding during the Second
World War and lost all contact with his family. After he contacted her,
they met and the reunion led to an album of shared information on her
deceased relatives and his missing siblings.
While researching her family history, my friend discovered a child
out of wedlock to an aunt who remained overseas. This child had been
the product of an intriguing affair with a paternal uncle. She also un-
earthed the fact that her mother previously had been partnered to
another man with whom she had two children, both of whom died
shortly after birth. My friend had always been curious and perplexed by
her mothers advanced age when she was born, but her mother always
slipped behind a veil of silence whenever she asked her about it.
This fascination with memory and history is part of the human con-
dition. Psychoanalysts spend a considerable part of their time in the
caves of reminiscence. Artifacts and relics of a past intermingle with
souvenirs from the present. The factual and the fictional weave them-
selves into a personal and familial tapestry. One of my patients showed
me a book about Maritime Canada; she was proud of the prominence of
her family story recorded in print, with a Post-it at each of five cher-
ished entries.
With their names well disguised, I will let you eavesdrop on some
comments by my patients:
You know, there are three names that keep repeating themselves
through my family history: Raimonde, Philippe, and Franois. They
are like shadows that keep appearing and disappearing. I know that
my mothers side landed in Canada in 1666 from the Loire valley in
France and my fathers family arrived thirty years later from Nor-
mandy. I am the archivist in my family, and so I have the official
documents safeguarded in my home office. This work is making me
want to go back and do some family research. These namesI won-
der what these recurring names were all about. To this day, I do not
know.
***
I dont know very much about my family history. I do know that my

grandmother came from Istanbul, a very aristocratic lady, and my
grandfather was Persian. What a mixno wonder it didnt last. But
then there were all these aunties and uncles with children of ages
from my own to thirty years my senior. Maybe its time to put it down
on paper. With the Internet, I have been contacted by people from
around the world who are my cousins, and I want to know who they
are, what they look like, what the stories are.
***
My mothers people were Scottish-Irish. It was all mixed up at some

point. But my fathers people were French Canadian. The spelling of
our surname has been modified and Anglicized in its pronunciation,
but the Tonnerres are a proud family. My great-great-great-grand-
father owned land and that land was passed down to my father, as he
was the eldest son. If you go anywhere in rural New Brunswick,
people will recognize my fathers name, the name I no longer carry.
***
My own family tree is a hybrid of Russian and Austro-Hungarian
branches. All four of my grandparents spent their childhoods imbibing
the Yiddish language and culture in shtetlach, or towns, in the Pale of
Settlement, that region of western Imperial Russia beyond which Jews
102 CHA P TER 10
were prohibited. They made their way from Radauti, Romania; from
Minsk, Belarus; from Raskol, Russia; and from Czernowitz, Bukovina.
In my desk lies a file of family memorabilia, for I am the keeper of
the embarkation certificates and documents of my familys history. I
have always wondered what my grandparents carried on their long voy-
age beginning in the east and across the Atlantic, but none of them are
alive today, and my mother is a poor archivist. I have tried to re-create
the scenes of departure but do so in vain: a fourteen-year-old girl travel-
ing with her parents, a nineteen-year-old man traveling alone to meet a
brother, a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone to join up with a sister
and brother-in-law.
Unlike family searches from other nationalities, the Jews are at a
certain disadvantage in their search for tribal origins. Constant move-
ment and exile, especially in countries behind the former Iron Curtain,
multiple linguistic families and dialects, and the obliteration of records,
synagogues, and cemeteries during the Second World Warall create
obstacles to the search. On the positive side, in the more distant past,
the rabbis of the medieval period considered recordkeeping a sacred
and pious duty. They mandated for recording genealogical information
about the authors of Talmudic commentary and responsa of rabbinical
students. Genealogical information is now pooled in several distinct
sources. With the population of Jews worldwide being a finite number,
it is possible to perform a reasonable search.
Equipped with a treasury chest of paraphernalia and documentation,
my cousin Mel is engaged in the pursuit of our family ancestry. Records
of birth, death certificates, medical records, passports, photographs,
federal census records, newspaper clippings, telephone directories, im-
migration and naturalization records, city directories, ships passenger
lists, and probate recordsall populate his desk in neatly arranged
piles. He has contacted various living relatives, consulted books on Jew-
ish geographical history, searched the Internet, and pursued correspon-
dence with source contacts in Russia to enlarge his search.
My husband has recently discovered that his cousin has been re-
searching the family genealogy on his maternal side. He has discovered,
through his cousins investigations, that his lineage places him in the
same bloodlines as several royal figures in the Netherlands, France, and
Britain. In his family tree are Counts of Holland, Dukes of Friesland,
Kings of Alsace, and even a link to Charlemagne and Pepin III. Appar-
ently, the family lines have yielded productive results due to the colli-
sion of the familys genealogies with well-documented lines of historical
significance.
You must begin to treat me with respect, my husband says. There
is a family line that goes right back to Roman emperor Flavius Valentin-
inus the First!
A similar search of family history is narrated by the Chilean author
Cynthia Rimsky, but her family narrative sinks into a tribulation of
uncertainty and doubt. In her autobiographical novel, Poste Restante
(Unclaimed Mail), she sets out on a search to uncover details of her
familys unknown past, which until then had been revealed only in
fragments and scraps. A second-generation Chilean, Rimsky becomes
obsessed with her discovery, at a flea market in her hometown of San-
tiago, of a photograph album with the inscription of her surname spelt
with an i instead of a y. She convinces herself of her connection to this
photograph through a family link based on the fact that many immi-
grants names had been modified by customs officers who transcribed
and registered the Cohens as Kohen, the Levys as Levi, in a way that
Rimsky could well have been Rimski. 2
And so the fragility of her identity is transferred to this name and
becomes the catalyst of a journey through twelve countries, culminating
in her final destination, Odessa in the Ukraine, the birthplace of her
parents. Six months into her trip, she is informed that the name Rim-
ski is a referent for Rimski Vrelec, the location of a Slovenian thermal
bath, which explains the dress of the family in the album from the flea
market. However, when she removes one of the album photos and
discovers the date 1940 on the back, she realizes that, since this area
had been evacuated of its Jews in this time period, the albums contents
could not possibly be of her familys relatives. Several months after her
return to Santiago, she receives a letter from Israel; it is from a woman
claiming to be a relative on the maternal side of her family. And so
another journey of discovery begins.
***
Genealogy is the writing of history on a personal scale. From its root
gen(e), we derive the Greek gignesthai, to become, to happen, and
the Latin gignere, to beget, and gnasci, to be born. From these
derivatives flow the words genius, ingenium, generic, genotype, misceg-
enation, degenerate, general, generous, and gender.
104 CHA P TER 10
Genealogy draws on our desire to carve a place for ourselves and our
family out of the larger historical context, to eliminate the fear that one
day we will be buried along with the family photos in some bottom
drawer of a basement dresser. It is the insurance that we will be com-
memorated in a chain linking generations that both precede and suc-
ceed us. The preservation and sanctity of the family line is momentous.
American antiquarians were already stowed away in library archives
recording local history when John Farmer, considered the founder of
genealogical research in America, decided to commemorate the found-
ing fathers and the heroes of the Revolutionary War. By so doing, he
established, in 1839, the first genealogical society of its kind: the New
England Historic Genealogical Society.
Today, the Genealogical Society of Utah is home to the largest
microfilm database of genealogical value, with over two million micro-
fiche and microfilm documents. Founded in 1894, it is currently the
primary hub for genealogical research and a stopping place for millions
of people engaged in personal family research. Similarly, the National
Genealogical Society in Washington, DC, founded in 1903, had grown
from 395 members in 1948 to over 4,000 by 1974 and today has over
4,600 local family history centers around the world. Due to the growing
interest in genealogy, Library and Archives Canada created a website in
2002 to supplement existing resources and provide assistance to Cana-
dians.
And so, in the arborescent system of Western man, we scramble up
and down those limbs of transmission that precede our birth, trying to
place ourselves on those preestablished branches. We design trees with
multiple roots and place our names in little boxes below the ground. Or
we draw photos of named faces floating in the trees crown. Trees with
boxlike leaves, trees with green leafy branches; sticklike trees, human
trees with legs for the trunk and arms for the branchesall of the
creative forms in which we honor our family history.
As Deleuze and Guattari, mentioned above, write: The tree im-
poses the word to be. 3 A fixed stickiness is associated with this signifi-
er. We can try to eliminate the power of our rootedness in a family, yet
we are permanently glued to some part of its structure. We are a part of
the seed from which we have been born.
***
Social history is also a story of bloodlines, but rather than the indi-
vidual family tree, its branches depict the recounting of a community on
a collective level. This branch of history identifies families and clans
grouped together by genetic inheritance or racial traces.
Bloodlines are blueprints for genealogical research, the physical ba-
sis on which genealogical trees are built. They are the physical carriers
that trace population genetics. Genomes, the genetic code of chromo-
somes inherited from our parents, can never lie. They detail the specific
history of shared genetic markers through genetic mapping.
The English Monarchs. The Plantagenets. The United Kingdom
Monarchs. The House of Stuart, the House of Hanover, the House of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the House of Windsor. The family tree of
todays British Royal Family is a history of Europe with marriages and
suitors, spouses and lovers, rampaging across national boundaries. In
1917 George V changed the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha to Windsor to enhance the familys public image with a more
British house name. At that time the British Empire, the French Re-
public, and the Russian Empire were allies at war with Italy and Ger-
many.
On November 30, 1917, King George V issued letters patent defin-
ing who could be defined as members of the Royal Family. The text of
the notice from the London Gazette on December 14, 1917, reads as
follows:
Whitehall, 11th December, 1917. The KING has been pleased by

Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, bearing date the 30th ultimo, to define the styles
and titles to be borne henceforth by members of the Royal Family. It
is declared by the Letters Patent that the children of any Sovereign
of the United Kingdom and the children of the sons of any such
Sovereign and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of
Wales shall have and at all times hold and enjoy the style, title or
attribute of Royal Highness with their titular dignity of Prince or
Princess prefixed to their respective Christian names or with their
other titles of honour; that save as aforesaid the titles of Royal High-
ness, Highness or Serene Highness, and the titular dignity of Prince
and Princess shall cease except those titles already granted and re-
maining unrevoked; and that the grandchildren of the sons of any
such Sovereign in the direct male line (save only the eldest living son
106 CHA P TER 10
of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) shall have the style and title
enjoyed by the children of Dukes. 4
In 1996 Her Majesty the Queen modified these letters patent with a
notice in the London Gazette. It is likely that these further restrictions
were intended to limit access and to protect the wealth and power of
the Royals. The formal change in law ensures that wives of the royal
family are curtailed in their access to money and title. Curiously, this
notice appeared a year before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales:
The QUEEN has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great
Seal of the Realm dated 21st August 1996, to declare that a former
wife (other than a widow until she shall remarry) of a son of a Sove-
reign of these Realms, of a son of a son of a Sovereign and of the
eldest living son of the eldest son of The Prince of Wales shall not be
entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of Royal High-
ness. 5
As with every empire, we can enumerate the emperors and rulers,

the princes and princesses, and the assortment of related men and
women who constitute each of the royal assemblies. The Xia Dynasty.
The Shang Dynasty. The Zhou Dynasty. The Qin Dynasty. Indian dy-
nasties, Japanese dynasties, Egyptian dynasties.
***
While bloodlines trace a history of the collective, they can also be a
pretext for the desire for genetic purity. Bloodlines can be a ruse for
national perfection, the sinister underbelly of inbreeding for perfection.
The Nazis are the most recent and infamous example of those who
have defended racial integrity and ethnic cleansing. In the name of
Aryan purity, they sacrificed millions of people, notably Jews and gyp-
sies, whom they considered inferior breeds. Unfortunately, in too many
countries today, individuals with particular ethnic or foreign-sounding
names automatically become the victims of racial abuse and even purg-
ing.
The notion of genetic purity has filtered down through the genera-
tions. Joseph Jacobs was a leading physical anthropologist in fin-de-
sicle Europe. As a Jewish polymath, he was interested in literature,
philosophy, history, and mathematics. Deeply affected by George Eli-
ots book Daniel Deronda, in which an English gentleman develops an
affinity for the Jewish community, Jacobs discovered his own Jewish
heritage, embraced his roots, and married Mirah, a Jewish singer. Like
Daniels transformative self-discovery, Jacobs subsequently turned his
attention to Jewish history and texts. Studying with Francis Galton, the
cousin of Charles Darwin, he became convinced that certain races and
nations were unique, and that these racial differences, which revealed
themselves in the intellectual output of a race, could be decisive. Jacobs
felt that a study of Jewish history, when combined with an analysis of
Jewish racial characteristics, would provide him with a powerful arsenal
in the battle against anti-Semites and therefore with a possible resolu-
tion to the Jewish question.
Today, with advances in technology, the field of genetic research has
blossomed around the word in internationally shared research para-
digms. In his informative book Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish
People, Harry Ostrer suggests that the exploration of physical ancestry
through genetic testing makes it possible to examine certain lineages.
Through the testing of particular chromosomal DNA and other genetic
markers, the field of population genetics has opened the door to de-
tailed studies of population evolution and migration patterns.
The genetic analysis of contemporary Jewish populations scattered
around the globe has suggested certain trends in the movement of
people who may have originated from the same place. Ostrer points out
that, by studying certain biological markers, we can deepen our under-
standing of the deep ancestry of all major human populations. Conse-
quently, teams of scientists around the world are now tracking popula-
tion shifts and genetic migrations.
But let us beware. For many people, the study of genetic ancestry
arouses a curiosity about those primal tribal connections and roots and a
biological basis for ethnic singularity. And from ethnic purity there are
only a few steps to national purity, xenophobia, and racism. Extreme
caution must be taken to ensure that genetic research does not backfire.
Ostrer notes that the American Society of Human Genetics has issued
an advisory against using genetic tests as a basis for predicting personal
ancestry. 6
11
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
While my birth was celebrated with great joy and ceremony, or so

goes the family legend, I have always been convinced that my parents
anticipated, and perhaps even wanted, a son. My mother had been an
only child, but my fathers large family, with two sisters eclipsed by
seven brothers, made me think my parents had expected to have at least
one male child. In a moment of weakness, my father once confessed
that, yes, he had wanted a son, but, no, seconds after my birth, it had all
been forgotten. You were just so adorable. I melted when I saw you,
he said. But then there were his repeated quips, I am overruled in a
household of females. Its only me and the dog. Or, the more quasi-
serious one familiar to many women, And what will happen to the
Himes name when you girls get married? Of course, that was before
the trend of women maintaining their maiden name. Do women not
also hope that their family line will not be extinguished by the absence
of children?
Several strongly patriarchal cultures still place a premium on the
birth of boys. For example, the celebration of a sons birth often out-
weighs that of a daughters, or, as noted in chapter 5 in reference to
Muslim names, both boys and girls are named with a patronymic (son
of . . . ).
Until recently, with more stringent birth quotas in place, baby girls
in China were either killed or exported for adoption. That country,
and other nations such as Pakistan and India, are known to have prac-
109
110 CHA P TER 11
ticed female infanticide, resulting in the current imbalance of the male-

to-female population.
While naming rights suggest the potency and ascendancy of men
over women, we must not forget that there was a time in the early
history of mankind when the female element was considered the primal
and divine source of all nature. Among the ancient religions, female
deities were worshipped as a maternal wellspring of creation invested
with sacred powers. It took a long struggle before the male, conceived
as a father, replaced female deitiesin this process female deities were
repressed and transformed into demons, and the place of women came
to be devalued.
Traces of this struggle still linger in certain scriptures and textual
elaborations. For example, in Judaism, the female presence of God,
referred to as the Shekinah, or divine wisdom, suggests an ongoing
respect for the sensitivity and wisdom of women.
***
And the tensions persist to this day. Today, we women continue to
challenge the remnants of male overvaluation. We continue to ask:
What is it about the extra chromosome that makes him so valuable?
Why is it the name of the father and not the mother that confers status
on the next generation even in matrilineal societies?
I escaped to a retreat center recently to write in silence for a few
days. At suppertime, a small group of women sat around the table,
doing what we do naturally, sharing food and sharing conversation.
Having struggled that day with a complicated issue, I decided to men-
tion my writing project. Curiosity led to many questions and, to my
benefit, a fruitful discussion.
One young woman told me about the process that she and her hus-
band had undergone in naming their two children, now aged seven and
two years:
My name is Rosita Pollock, Pollock being of Scottish origin, and my

common law partners name is Jason Hunter. We were together for
four years before having children. When it came to naming our first-
born, we had many heated discussions about our childs surname.
We did not want to go the route of a double surname because that
gets so confusing, and if our child wanted to get married, there
would be all the complications of three or even four surnames and
how to manage that. I was sure that I did not want to give up my
I N T H E N AM E OF T H E FAT HER 111
surname, as I am very proud of my name. Besides, I was opposed to

the notion that women have to automatically forfeit their name for
the sake of some tradition that says all children must assume their
fathers surname. My name is just as important!
Eventually, we decided that if the firstborn child was a boy, he
would assume his fathers surname, and if it was a girl, she would
take my name. Then, the second child would automatically take the
name of the other parent irrespective of the gender. As it turned out,
our firstborn was a girl and so she took my name, and our second is a
boy and he took my partners name. It was a very hard decision for
my partner to agree on this, but thankfully he did.
But the story doesnt stop there, because then we had to decide
on the first name, which also became a weighty selection process. I
wanted my childs name to be different and uniqueit had to be a
name I had never heard before, and since I am in the event planning
industry, I have seen thousands of names on registration lists over
the years. You can imagine how frustrating it was for my partner and
me when he would suggest a name and I would say I had already
heard it before. He then suggested that we walk through cemeteries
and read all the headstones for ideas. Eventually I came across a
name I liked but we modified the spelling, so instead of Emeline, we
gave her the name Emeleen. As for her middle name, we gave her
the name Sonja, which is an anagram of Jason, her fathers first
name. This way he could feel like she was named after him as well.
There were other issues that made the naming process difficult.
We had considered giving our first child the gender-free name Hunt-
er, my partners surname, as a kind of compromise, but as I read
through the four pages of Quebec laws on the Registration of a Birth,
with all the rules and regulations related to name-giving, I under-
stood that you were not allowed to use a parents surname as a given
name. It made sense to me that Quebec would not want a child to
have a double name such as Hunter Hunter. With the uncertainty of
whether it would be allowed or not, we ruled out Hunter Pollack.
We also learned that the government has the right to deny parents a
chosen name and that every name is vetted before it is registered on
a birth certificate. Apparently, in the history of this law, there has
only been one name where this ruling was exercised and a name
denied. I think this is so people do not name their child something
like Teacup or Spoon.
As for our son, he was three when we adopted him, so we kept
the first name he had been given by his birth mother: Tyler. We did
112 CHA P TER 11
change his middle name from Joe to Jonas so we would have an

anagram of Jasons name, just like his sister. We tried doing an ana-
gram of Rosita, but we did not like any of the combinations. And, as
per the original agreement between my partner and I, Tyler was
given Jasons surname, Hunter.
The sharing of this anecdote led another woman, five months preg-
nant, to comment on the names and naming in her family. Her mother,
sitting to her side, rolled her eyes and said with a laugh, You will need
a whole chapter to cover the names in our family. Her daughter spoke
to me after I retrieved a paper and pencil:
My first name is Shiva and my surname is Barbosa Khorramshahi.

My mother is Brazilian, but one-eighth Italian (somewhere on her
fathers side, ergo Barbosa), and my father is Persian. My mothers
full name is Ana Rita (pronounced Ana Hita in Portuguese) de Mat-
tos Barbosa, but she usually goes by Ana. As it turns out, Anarita is
also a name used in Iran. My fathers name is Shahram Khorramsha-
hi.
My maternal grandmother had difficulty carrying a child to full
term and had several miscarriages. During the time in which she
tried to have another child, she made a vow to St. Ana that every
female child born would carry her name, and that the first one would
carry the name Ana Rita. After five years, she had my mother, and in
tribute to the success of her pregnancy and delivery, she gave that
name to my mother, Ana being the saint of pregnancy and childbirth.
When she had my mothers sister a few years later, her name also
included the patron saint Ana; her name is Ana Carla. My siblings
names are Andre, which is Brazilian, and Bruna, which is Brazilian
and Italian. My name, Shiva, is clearly Persian.
The father of my baby is Argentinean, and he also carries a com-
plex name. I very much want this baby to carry my mothers name,
and double names are typical in both our cultures. So we agree to a
double family name, but we cannot agree on the name order. He
says, jokingly, that he wants to know whether the first or second of
the family names is more important or more official in Canadian
culture. I guess we will have to see what happens when the time
comes to make that decision. The jury is still out on that one.
I asked another woman at the table about her name.

My name is Neeraja, but I am called Neera here. My name is a

Sanskrit name that means lotus. My surname is Shukla, which
means white or purity. My fathers generation was the first to
take on a surname in the Western tradition, and like many others
who took the name Shukla, it is a name adopted from the Hindu
caste system. My mother did not have a surname, so when she got
married, she took my fathers surname. She explained to me that the
naming convention in Southern India at that time was the fathers
place of birth followed by the fathers name and then the given
name.
***
In spite of the changing patterns of naming, the paternal structure
continues to be a source of friction for feminists and academics alike.
While the challenge may remain for each couple to determine their
own solution, it does not answer the more general question of paternal
domination. Why the father? Why all the fuss about him?
For many men and women, patriarchy, or the rule of the father, is
interpreted as a desire for control and possession. Man seeks to domi-
nate and control. Therefore, man assumes authority and power of the
woman and her baby by the granting of his name. By this name, I have
rights over you and this baby; and in return, I will protect and care for
the both of you. Conversely, the woman accepts her husbands name for
her child on the condition that he will provide and look after both of
them.
Let us consider one possible explanation of this notion. The status
and definition of a mother is an unquestionable and unquestioned real-
ity. Nine months of an expanding belly that provides the first temporary
domicile of a developing fetus attests to the absolute certainty of a
newborns biological mother. No additional proof or testing is required.
After all, we have watched the babys development, felt its feet and fists
pound the walls of a smoothly rounded abdomen, seen its heartbeat on
an ultrasound monitor, and witnessed its delivery.
By contrast, the fathers identity slides into the realm of faith. Strict,
positive identification of a newborns father is never an act of irrefutable
and categorical truth, as it is based on an implicit assumption endorsed
by the declaration of the mother. And yet we all know that she could be
lying. Women from early history on have falsified a fathers identity,
withholding the truth to save a relationship or to ensure a childs future
114 CHA P TER 11
stability. Fact and fiction lie closer than we think regarding paternity
and the creative potency of a mans sexual prowess. It is this doubt and
uncertainty that makes the fathers status unreliable and suspect. Even
today, recurrent jokes about paternity are told: Maybe shes the post-
mans kid. He kinda looks like the car salesman. Are you sure this
one is mine?
Could it be that in the act of naming (and here I am referring
specifically to the granting of the surname), the father lends his name,
by this gesture ensuring that he will be authorized as the father? Does
the man, by bestowing his surname, symbolically legalize a claim on his
status and right as father? After all, we know that when a child is
adopted, he or she takes on the surname of his or her adoptive father as
a means of establishing ownership. It would appear that by assigning
his name to the newborn, the father simultaneously names (the child)
and is named himself; he is named father of this child.
Shortly after I wrote this, a young mother told me about a hospital
scene the day after she had given birth.
My friends said to my husband, She looks just like you, she really
looks just like you. Just look at those eyes. Do you really think so?
he responded. Really? Quite frankly, I thought she looked like an
alien or a wrinkled-up prune, but I let him believe what he wanted
to.
He later admitted to me that in some strange way he had felt
reassured, for he said, I found myself thinking, I guess it really is my
child and no one elses. And then I began to wonder if people always
say that a newborn looks like the father so that the father feels a
greater connection. After all, you were the one who carried the baby
around for months within you and so you have already established
that close bond. Whereas I didnt have that experience. But when
our friends said she looked like me, I felt a real connection. Like,
hey, this little baby girl really is mine.
Is it possible that man also needs reassurance to feel a powerful

bond with his newborn? Does the act of naming a child with the fathers
surname create a bond and commitment that might otherwise be lack-
ing? Can it be that this act satisfies or fulfills a certain absence of
bonding that is automatic for the mother but nonexistent or unavailable
to the father?
In todays society, many fathers are more involved in child-rearing,

assuming a larger role in co-parenting. Shut out from the arena of
breast-feeding, are men seeking a way of remaining connected to their
newborn and becoming involved not only in name? While a current of
male-female tension and mother-father friction still underlies family
dynamics, todays parents at least discuss the positives of mutual respect
and job-sharing within the family unit.
***
The Haida totem pole staring down at me from my bookshelf re-
minds me of a trip to western Canada and my own journey of discovery,
before then and since, regarding the deep history of totemism that
underlies naming. It was the summer of 1997, and my husband and I
were on a week of kayak paddling with six others, off the northern coast
of Vancouver Island. We were in search of the orcas, infamously known
as killer whales but in fact only predatory and dangerous when swim-
ming in nonresidential waters. It was a week of dampness and rain that
penetrated my limbs, a week of eating dried food with lots of trail mix
and campfire marshmallows, a week with a lot of laughs with strangers,
and, yes, one that was punctuated by two close encounters with pods of
whales performing acrobatics alongside our boats.
On the last day of this adventure, we disembarked and walked along
a beach of shale and colored glass, remnants of a deserted community.
As we ascended onto the flat land, we saw three gigantic totems lying
like dead warriors. We walked around the vestiges of a longhouse to
arrive at a shack in which two men were working. The younger of the
two stood behind a long table on which lay several ornamental objects: a
shamans rattle, a dance rattle, and an impressive number of traditional
masks. Our small group surrounded him and he explained that he was
preparing these pieces for an upcoming celebrationa throwback to a
traditional potlatch.
The word potlatch, he told us, comes from the Chinook language
and means to give away or gift. He said it derived from an older
word meaning to make a ceremonial gift in a potlatch. His voice was
low as he continued. He mumbled about the olden days when the
purpose of the potlatch was tied to a redistribution and reciprocity of
wealth, a showing of ones prosperity, with the wealthy members host-
ing elaborate potlatches in longhouses built specifically for the occasion.
Celebration of births, rites of passages, weddings, funerals, namings,
116 CHA P TER 11
and honoring of the deceasedall could be occasions for a potlatch

celebration. As he spoke, his hands adeptly moved a carving instrument
back and forth along a piece of wood shaping the mask.
There was something shy or self-effacing about this soft-spoken
man. He did not wish to share too much with our group of inquisitive
members. He did not tell us that the potlatch would usually involve a
feast, with music, dance, and theatrical events. He did not show any
enthusiasm or zeal. I think maybe he had been caught unawares by our
group. He remained reticent, and we left respectfully without asking
too many questions.
When we returned to our kayaks, our guides told us that in the mid-
1800s, 90 percent of the indigenous population had been decimated by
a smallpox outbreak brought to the Queen Charlotte Islands, the home
base of the Haida. We were told that in 1894 the Canadian government
outlawed the potlatch. With the collapse of this tradition, all ceremonial
items associated with potlatches, such as bowls, ladles, masks, head-
dresses, and all dance regalia, became defunct.
The unforgiving wording of the decree, now available on the Inter-
net, is harsh:
Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating

the Indian festival known as the Potlatch or the Indian dance
known as the Tamanawas is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be
liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two
months in any gaol or other place of confinement; and, any Indian or
other person who encourages, either directly or indirectly, an Indian
or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same,
or who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like of-
fence, and shall be liable to the same punishment. 1
When I returned to Toronto, I followed up with some more research

and discovered that many artists died without passing on their knowl-
edge of the traditional style of carving to the next generation. However,
in the mid-twentieth century, after a strenuous and lengthy struggle,
the ban was repealed. Elders, recognizing the importance of their histo-
ry, tried to remember what they could to help the next generation
rebuild their rich heritage. However, just when the people were regain-
ing their identities, the missionaries moved in and convinced the people
to give up their old beliefs and traditions. Totem poles were burned for
firewood, and children were placed in boarding schools, without their

families. They were prevented from speaking their language and forced
to speak English, with severe punishment for noncompliance.
It is the rich history of early manthe traces of which we can see in
the culture of Native peoplesthat helps us get a glimpse of how nomi-
nation came about. What do we know about its origin? What is the early
relationship between man and his name? Earlier we discussed that pair
of linguistic terms, nomen and nomas, the interweaving of the name,
patriarchy, and the law. Now let us begin another journey, this time
with anthropology, not etymology, as our guide.
Before the God of Abraham and the three desert religions created
the birth of the universe and fashioned man from the dust of the earth
by blowing the breath of life into his nostrils . . .
And before the birth of Athens and the war of Troy, before the rape
of Europa and the marriage of Cadmus to Harmony, before the Olym-
pian gods and the heroes cajoled man into a cosmos beyond their
reach . . .
And before the Greeks sat on the steps of the Coliseum discussing
the nature of the universe and the importance of self-inquiry and free
reasoning . . .
And before the birth of Logos, the divine word of God, represented
by the wisdom of Jesus; and before the kiss and the betrayal by Judas
Iscariot, whose name Judas (Ioudas) is the Greek form of Judah (He-
brew for praised); and before Christs crucifixion and resurrection . . .
Before all of that, primitive man, according to the sciences of anthro-
pology and ethnology, traversed the earths mountains and valleys and
set up habitations in roaming bands. Eventually these bands formed
into group collectives: tribes, clans, moieties, or phratries. Man, the
social animal, discovered his natural world and lived off the land in
harmony, respecting the forces that dominated his universe. In terms of
the brotherhood of man, it was a time of both mutual generosity and
fierce competition for the earths bounty: a time of the forming of early
social bonds.
Nineteenth-century anthropologists working in field studies around
the world discovered that group totemism circumscribed the lifestyle of
early man who lived off the land through hunting and gathering. Ex-
tending from African pygmies through Oceania to Australian aborigi-
nals, from Native North American peoples through South America In-
118 CHA P TER 11
dians, and from the hunters and reindeer breeders of Siberian steppes
to the herdsmen in North and Central Asia, totemism was a social and
religious or spiritual form of collective organization.
The term totem is derived from the Ojibway word ototeman, mean-
ing ones brother-sister kin, while the grammatical root, ote, signifies a
blood relationship between brothers and sisters who have the same
mother and may not marry each other. This word was introduced into
the English language in 1791 by a British merchant and translator who
gave it a false meaning in the belief that it designated the guardian spirit
of an individual who appeared in the form of an animal.
Totemism involves a system of beliefs that marries man to nature.
Like the animal spirits carved on my totem pole, totemism insists that
each human being has a spiritual connection or kinship with another
physical being, either plant or animal. Each clan or tribe, sharing com-
mon blood ancestry, distinguishes and differentiates itself on the basis
of its group totem.
Like the vows we implicitly and explicitly make within our nuclear
family, clan behaviors were dictated on the basis of relationships be-
tween man and his particular spirit-being. Elaborate rituals and cere-
monial ritesour Mothers Day and Fathers Day celebrations perhaps
being a muted equivalentwere carried out to reinforce identifications
with the group totem.
Clan members considered themselves brothers and sisters, bound to
help and protect one another. If a member of one clan was killed by an
outsider, the whole clan of the aggressor would be responsible for the
deed, and conversely, the whole clan of the murdered man would be at
one in demanding satisfaction for the blood-shedding. Stronger than
our current family bond, clan relationships commanded total commit-
ment.
From the inception of this practice, two striking prohibitions were
imposed among all clan members: no marriage between men and wom-
en of the same clan, and no killing of a tribal ancestor (that is, no killing
of a totemic animal and no eating or killing of a totemic plant). The
prohibition against marriage and sexual intercourse between clan mem-
bers, the precursor of both exogamy (the proscription of marrying out-
side the clan) and the incest taboo, remain two of the most fundamental
tenets of our civilization, inscribed by law in all human commandments.
Anthropological studies also describe a strong link between nomen-

clature and totemism. Early man named his clan after animals, plants,
and other inanimate objects. Clans, needing to distinguish themselves
as separate individuals and families, used these heraldic badges and
objects as forms of clan identification. Just as we saw in the linguistic
division between nomen and nomos, history shows that early man living
in community always required a permanent mark, which then could be
fixed in a form of writing or documentation. In this way, collective man
could distinguish himself from others.
It has been argued that this primitive form of classification predated
naming as a mark of tribal identification, just as communal living pre-
dated the establishment of the nuclear family with its more personal
naming rituals. According to one theory, proper names were derived
from totems and based on sacred and esoteric knowledge, as well as
certain personality traits. The origin of these names was subsequently
forgotten, with the clan totem surviving as a trace memory. Another
possible explanation is that totems, borrowed from animals and plants,
arose from practical needs, and that the original core of totemism, no-
menclature, was the result of this primitive technique of writing.
Through the preexisting bonds between man and totem as well as
name and totem, individual kinship ties could be linked to ancestral
history of the clan. Max Mller, an English philologist, expressed it
succinctly when he wrote, A totem is a clan mark which then becomes
a clan name, then the ancestor of a clan and finally an object of worship
by the clan. 2 A clan and its name, totemism and ancestry, were clearly
well forged in this early period of history.
Anthropologists disagree over how different cultures constructed
and developed their myths, rites, and customs, and what they valued as
sacred and profane. Cultural determinists believe mans knowledge of
his external world to be relative, not fixed by cross-cultural conventions.
Each culture or community creates its own worldview of reality to
which all group members must comply. We are not born into like-
minded families and marked with a common name to cement our bond;
rather, we freely create family or kinship bonds on the basis of our
system of knowledge. Anyone with the same name or from the same
village may be viewed as a kinsman. For example, one may be kin to
another by being born on the same day (Inuit), by following the same
tribe (Arawet), or by surviving a trial at sea (Truk) or on the ice (Inuit).
120 CHA P TER 11
By contrast, the rival defenders and proponents of biological, or

genetic, determinism argue that all human behaviors and characteristics
are encoded in a form of genetic mapping that is universally inscribed.
Kinship ties and bonds are necessarily biological and fixed, and names
are assigned on the basis of blood ties.
***
I would like to offer another perspective that stands in radical oppo-
sition to both these anthropological theories. Many people associate the
name of Sigmund Freud with his concepts of the superego, the ego, and
the id; conscious, preconscious, unconscious; libido and childhood sexu-
ality; the pleasure principle; or perhaps even his theories on dream
interpretation. Yet he is probably best known for his elaboration of the
Oedipus complex and thereby radicalizing our thinking about mans
psychological development.
Freud referred to the unfolding of each family drama as the dynam-
ics of the Oedipal complex; on the basis of Sophocles Athenian tragedy,
Oedipus Rex, he insisted on this trianglemother, father, childas the
structuring of mans psychic constitution. Throughout his lifetime, he
never wavered from this belief that every human child, at an early stage
of his life, was forced to encounter these primal passions: a sexual desire
for the parent of the opposite sex and a desire for death of the rival
parent.
Indeed, who has not witnessed the powerful outbreak of emotions in
the young child? The powerful want, the full bodily rejection of no, the
tender embrace of yes? Rivalries and jealousies, powerful impulses of
love and hate, all mix to create an emotional alchemy underlying mans
earliest relationships and forming the template for all future ones. Per-
sisting in the universality of this complex across cultures, Freud writes
that every new arrival on this planet is faced with the task of mastering
the Oedipus complex.
Now, the father of psychoanalysis was very much a Renaissance
man, widely read and with broad interests. His lifelong passion to
understand the source of neurotic suffering and the causes of psychic
conflict led him to pursue all avenues of academic pursuit. In his mid-
dle years, he turned his gaze to the past in the search for mans origins,
which resulted in his seminal text Totem and Taboo of 19121913. In
this controversial piece of writing, Freud walked back into that phyloge-
netic history, or prehistory, to continue the journey of his search for
mans psychic beginnings. He hoped to uncover, in this mythic past, a

relationship between the underlying psychology of primitive peoples, as
explored by social anthropologists, and the psychology of neurotics, as
uncovered by psychoanalysis. By entering a time when men lived in
clans and tribes, the vestiges of which we see in some surviving indige-
nous communities, Freud would also push mans origins from an indi-
vidual to a collective level in a more archaic past, describing his hypo-
thetical theory as the myth of the Primal Horde.
Here is my rendition of this myth: In the beginning was the Archaic
Father and the Primal Horde who traversed the earths landscape, liv-
ing off the bounty that nature provided. The Father, a dominant male
undoubtedly tall, handsome, and muscular (or whatever shape you ima-
gine him to have been), had access to all the women. The young men
(undoubtedly even taller, more virile, and better looking) resented this
alpha man who thwarted their jouissance by forbidding them access to
these women. And so these robust and vigorous men blended together,
rebelled, and killed the father, thereby releasing them to have full ac-
cess to all of the women.
Unfortunately, all acts of such magnitude come at a price, with un-
foreseen and unanticipated consequences. While the brothers rejoiced
with bacchanalian fervor, the dead father, in spite of their deed, rose up
from the ashes and inserted his presence over the sons and daughters.
As we might imagine, without his law there would have been chaos and
disorder: fraternal rivalry, fratricide, homicide, incest, rape. And so, the
silhouette of the dead father darkens the lives of his progeny. The
father is killed to ensure order; as we analysts say, the dead father rules
from the grave.
Freud never suggested that this mythic complex was ever enacted;
rather, he intended it as symbolic of the inevitability of mans encounter
with his own Oedipus-in-the-making. For Freud, the proposed hypoth-
esis of the killing of the primal father became the quintessential first
moment in the genesis of mankind. By adopting this hypothesis, he
placed the father at the core of civilization.
Like the anthropologists, Freud considered the totem animal a pri-
mal father, a common ancestor personified in the figure of the father or
father substitute: a kinship unit, a totem, a name. With the fracturing of
clans into the evolution of the nuclear family, naming rituals would have
changed over time. Family units initially would have carried the clan
122 CHA P TER 11
name or a variation on it, which would then have been passed down to
the sons and daughters of each family unit. In time, these would be
transformed into the names with which we are all familiar today.
The power of patriarchy lives on in the traces of those prohibitions
and injunctions of certain cultures and ethnic groups. Ongoing prac-
tices regarding naming provide some proof: Have you ever wondered
why there is a prohibition against naming someone after a parent or
relative who is still alive? Or what about tribes who prohibit naming the
dead? The repressed traces of the incest taboo bans certain naming
practices that are considered too close or too threatening to the under-
lying fabric of the family.
***
Now let us return to the present for a moment with the sketch of a
very early time in our lives, a time that can only be reimagined and
retold, but never relived. A blissful cocoon of love and tenderness, an
illusory bond of unitythe image of Madonna and Child. A time of
mutual pleasure and satisfaction.
Helpless in the cradle of attention, an infant finds himself at the
complete mercy of a woman who comes and goes at will. Our little one
becomes increasingly attentive to his mothers presence and absence,
fascinated by her behavior, and tries to figure out her movements and
desires. What does she want? Where does she go? Who or what is more
important than I am? He begins to realize that there are other people
and situations that also demand her attention and take her away from
him. He begins to wonder about these thingsabout what she wants
and how he can satisfy her. He creates a fantasy of what she possibly
desires from him and his role in it. Do I need to smile for her? Eat all
my food? Poo in the potty every time on command? Eventually, his
attempts and strategies will form a blueprint for his later interactions
with significant others.
Gradually, our little one becomes aware of others in his environment
and begins recognizing the music of their speech, the interludes of
comings and goings, the pauses and flow of conversation. The father,
while also present from the beginning, begins to assume a position of
greater significance. He arrives as a permanent fixture in the childs
consciousness, breaking up this primary duet and forcing it into a party
of three or more. The father shatters the cozy cocoon of mutual satisfac-
tion and dual fascination between him and his mother.
This intervention ushers in another period of psychic maturity. De-

prived of the exclusive love and attention of his mother, the child, male
or female, is forced to look for love and satisfaction elsewhere. It is as
though the father draws a line in the sand between his wife and child,
forcing his childs evacuation from the clutches of its mothers embrace.
While the blissful union of Madonna and Child may be paradigmat-
ic, it is an exclusivity and inclusivity that also threatens to engulf the
child in a possible psychic death. As the analyst Lacan noted, the child
is already in the mouth of the crocodile (of the mother), but without the
intervention of the father, who knows when the child will be devoured
by the closing of that crocodiles mouth?
In this way, the father ensures that the child learns to find his own
playthings and his own friends. After all, we are all ultimately compelled
to become adult human beings in our own right, seeking out our own
partners and struggling with the multiple complexities of human rela-
tionships.
In his rewriting of Freuds Oedipus complex, Lacan labels the
fathers intervention between the mother and child the paternal meta-
phor, or the name-of-the-father (le nom du pre), a short step beyond
the path already laid down by Freud. (In English, we miss the homo-
phonic equivalence between non and nom, the no of the father and the
name of the father.) In psychic terms, the father, as a representative of
the law, forces the child to move beyond the dualistic, imaginary rela-
tionship with his mother. By this intervention, he introduces the child
to what is called the symbolic dimension of life; that is, the world of
universally shared language and socio-cultural mores.
Note that it is not the person of the father that is significant but the
function of the father (or surrogate), for it is just as possible for the
paternal function to be fulfilled in the case of a child whose father is
absent, and, conversely, the presence of a father is no guarantee that
this function will not be distorted or unfulfilled. Perhaps we can under-
stand this distinction by considering the difference between the person
of the father as an individual (the man who gets up every morning, gets
dressed, goes to work, and returns every night) and the function he
upholds (the task or purpose of his symbolic role).
The mother also supports the name-of-the-father as it occurs in daily
activities. Every time she says, Now, we all have to listen to what
Daddy says about touching everything in the store. We all have to be
124 CHA P TER 11
quiet in the movie theaters, for even Mommy and Daddy must not
speak too loudly inside, she too is demonstrating her compliance with a
symbolic order that goes beyond herself. In fact, both parents are called
on to educate children regarding the transcending, all-encompassing
laws with which they too as parents must comply.
This symbolic father, or his substitute (family relatives, the commu-
nity at large), not only ensures that each child will be introduced to this
order of language, social norms, and cultural history, but also requires
each of us to recognize and preserve the tenets of a law to which we are
all accountable. One interpretation is that the first ruling, the vestige of
that archaic law that we have seen described by anthropologiststhe
ban of incest, or the forced separation of the child from the mother and
vice versarepeats itself every generation and in every family.
***
The universal structure of the paternal metaphor, therefore, serves
as a shorthand for the necessity of our compliance with the law, be it
the individual laws of the family or the collective laws of society. Which
brings us back to our original question about patriarchy, names, and the
father: How did it happen that the father became the one who typically
carried the surname with which the child is named?
According to some psychoanalysts, to uphold the name-of-the-
father, a process that occurs automatically without conscious delibera-
tion, is to put the father in a position of authority, a status linked to the
primordial law against incest but one that includes all rituals of naming.
By placing the father in the position of lawgiver and upholder of certain
traditions, the child assumes his name and can then enter the chronolo-
gy of history, which in turn will place him or her in the position of
successor. By saying, You are my child and you shall carry my family
name, Smith, and giving the child his surname, the father (in a patrilin-
eal culture) inscribes in him a destiny that will allow him to be named-
to or named-in the succession of generations. And equally in a matrilin-
eal culture, the succession will occur through the mothers name yet
still in conformity with the laws of that culture (or, in the present con-
text, in conformity with the symbolic order upheld by the paternal
metaphor).
In this way, we can see how the proper name takes on the function
of a transmission, a passing-on or insurance that the fathers name will
sustain a continuity; it ensures a place of affiliation or belonging and
filiation for each child. Yet, in order to pass on the family name, the
father is defined as the upholder of this law. The father is the one
identified by the totem/clan or by the name inscribed on his burial. We
honor his name and in so doing show respect for the continuation of our
ancestry transmitted by our surname.
We can see a parallel in the realm of religion. Monotheism confers a
particular status on the law of the father. In the ancient world, the
Israelites perceived their god primarily as a law-giver. It was God the
law-giver who enunciated the Ten Commandments, inaugurating a
binding law that would become a universal code of ethics. Perhaps it
was necessary for a figure of law to insert himself in the everyday affairs
of men and women. After all, the Decalogue is the expression of a code
ensuring an ethics based on the universals of family dynamics with
which we are all too familiar: sibling rivalry and the vying competition
for parental favoritism, the problems of transmission and inheritance,
and the definition of ourselves in relation to the values of our family and
society. In spite of all the complexities of human nature, we manage (or
struggle), for better or for worse, to overcome these basic conflicts and
to honor our responsibilities as citizens and as family members.
And so we can say le nom du pre, the name/no of the father, a
concept borrowed from religion, yokes together the father and the
name. As a foundational concept, it confers identity on a subject by
naming him and positioning him within the symbolic order (le nom),
while simultaneously introducing the oedipal prohibition of the incest
taboo and its corollaries (le non).
***
And thus it largely continues. While our ancestors may have stood in
closer proximity to the gods in their daily lives, today we continue to
practice the inherited rituals of our forefathers in certain religious tradi-
tions. For example, to call upon or to invoke the authority of the father
in a religious context is to endow that figure with a certain power. We
accept and recognize that authority of a figure when he derives legiti-
macy from a community of believers.
From the pastan epithet in prayer: Ashur god of my father; Illa-
prat the god of your father; an oath: By the name of the god of my
father; an appeal to a king: By the name of the god Adad, lord of Aleppo
and the god of your father.
126 CHA P TER 11
To the present: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost; By the power invested in me . . .; I am the Lord your God; Our
Father, who art in heaven . . . In the name of, we justify our behavior,
we plead, we cry, we seek forgiveness. We call on and summon a force
beyond for witness, for inspiration, and for help, placing our faith in a
named figure of authority.
NOTES
12
VOLUNTARY NAME-CHANGING
Our name is like an elongated shadow attached at our heels. A tena-

cious sign of identification, it is intimately connected to our being. My
proper name, Mavis Carole Himes, shares with me a long and (at least
to me) captivating history. After all, we were born at almost the same
time. While I have not always liked my first name and at times have
even wanted to change it, there is an immutability to its presence.
While my surname has been abridged from the original, it remains the
name connected to my intergenerational past. Mavis Carole Himes is
the name I inhabit for better or for worse. We make assumptions about
names: one name for life, inscribed with my essence and my journey. A
name that I take for granted.
However . . .
There are voluntary name-changes for popularity and commercial
motivations: pen names, nicknames, mononyms, and pseudonyms that
many people choose to match a fantasized future of success and status.
There are name-changes in response to persecution and oppression:
new immigrants forced or willingly choosing another name to mark a
new chapter and to avoid further harassment and prejudice.
There are name-changes due to adoption in which the birth name is
effaced and rewritten.
There are the name-changes of marriage, in societies where women
adopt the surname of their husbands.
There are name-changes associated with a religious conversion or
spiritual transformation or upon admission to a religious order.
127
128 CHA P TER 12
And there are the explicit and insistent name-changes motivated by

a desire to remove oneself from a family lineage or to extract oneself
from the unbearable weight of a name in ones history.
If the name is a gift and a symbol of lineage from another, we can ask
the questions: What does it mean to change or modify ones name
voluntarily? Is it seen as a rejection of the name-givers? Can it be
modified without impact? Is it like changing a certain feature of ones
body, like the plastic surgery to alter or disguise ones identity? What
are the consequences of a name changed involuntarily? Perhaps even
forced or coerced?
***
From 2006 to 2009, Jane Siberry, the Canadian singer-songwriter
famous for such tunes as Calling All Angels, One More Colour, and
When I Was a Man, decided to change her name to Issa. In fact, this
was not her first name-change. Born Jane Stewart in 1979, she had
become Jane Siberry by adopting the surname of her maternal aunt and
uncle, who she admired for their strong bond of mutual love, hoping it
would be a reference point, a touchstone in her life.
She enjoyed many years of national and international success, but
then, following a professional failure, she dispossessed herself of mate-
rial life and went into seclusion. Following this period of brief invisibil-
ity, she reemerged with the new name Issa, the feminine equivalent of
the eighth-century prophet Isaiah. Curiously, this name also means sal-
vation and protection in African cultures.
In describing this process of disappearance and name-change, Siber-
ry said, I had to do something, I had to let go of Jane. I was silent for
twenty-four hours and Issa appeared at that point.
However, after three years, Jane reverted to her former name. She
told reporters: I felt the need to make some strong changes in my life.
It seemed important to change my name, so I did. I changed it to a
name that I thought was simple, an empty cup. I had never heard the
name Issa before, and it turns out to have some wonderful meanings,
including a haiku poet in Japan, and the name that Jesus had in India.
But two weeks ago I officially changed my name back to Jane Siberry. I
felt with the name-change, I had gotten in my own way, in terms of
devoting myself to my career, making my work available to people. So,
Jane Siberry is my name again until further notice, but I feel richer
from having been Issa for three years. 1
V OLU N T ARY N AM E - CH ANGING 129
***
Voluntary name-change can be temporary, a trial run at being an-
other character in a theater of ones own making. I, too, tried to re-
launch myself with another name, a temporary change although one
that was not completely foreign to me.
When I lived in Israel for a couple of years in the late seventies, I
became Malkah. As my Hebrew name, it was not really a name-change
per se, but I had never been called that before and no one knew me as
Malkah. I retained this name in Israel even though I was repeatedly
told that it was considered an old-fashioned, biblical name. Today fe-
male children in Israel are named after flowers and trees inspired by
the beauty of nature: Aviva, Dahlia, Shoshana.
Malkah emerged as a different woman than Mavis. Malkah became
sabarit (Israeli): strong, painted burnt caramel by the sun, made sweet
like the fruit of the land. I was camouflaged in the landscape, anony-
mous to those around me. I moved about the country in my spare time,
climbing mountains, swimming in caves, trekking through the desert
sands, inhaling the aroma of orange blossoms and zaatar, imbibing the
Mediterranean sea air. Israel brought me closer to a center that did not
exist in my Canadian-born soul.
While working as child psychologist in a childrens mental healths
clinic, I maintained a certain distance. My female colleagues were all
married, brooded over their children, and hovered around me like anx-
ious mother hens. My status as a divorced woman made me an object of
concern, for it was important that I find a partner and build a family.
Life is too short, too lonely as a single woman.
Life here in Eretz is difficult. You need someone to help you.
A woman without children is like a plant without water.
You need a husband, someone who can negotiate on your behalf.
In contrast to my well-intended peers, I relished my freedom, my
ability to choose how, where, when, and what. Being almost thirty,
nearly everyone I met was married. And in a country so tied to tradition
and celebration, it was often isolating to be in attendance as a single
woman. But there was Zvi and Yigdal, Ben and Chaim. There were
brief encounters intermingled with relatively longer relationships.
There was the excitement of a novel caress and the easy exit from
rancor and friction.
130 CHA P TER 12
On the other hand, I felt myself to be in perpetual conflict or ten-

sion. Here was this country of my people, of my ancestors. A tiny strip
of land over which so many millions of people had died and whose
death count had not yet stopped. The first intifada in Lebanon was
about to erupt; I would leave shortly before its outbreak.
Here was a country inhabited by peoples from Yemen, Iran, Moroc-
co, Turkey, Tunisia, and Georgia whose faces and mannerisms were
foreign yet whose practices of certain rituals were familiar. Pushy, ag-
gressive, arrogantall the stereotypes of Israeli transplants that I had
encountered in my own city in Canada I reencountered in Israel. Yet
alongside those with whom I felt no outward connection was an unspok-
en bond of recognition.
Here was this country of a desert people representing a particular
faith, a race of Semites, a nomadic people whose history I shared and
whose language I spoke. It was not the Hebrew words, it was not the
Yiddishisms interspersed in the conversations with my friends; it was
not the oriental accent but a familiarity of presence, a glance, a smile of
recognition. Malkah had returned: Exodus revisited. I made aliyah,
gone up, ascended to the House of Israel, the house of my ancestors.
I lived in a maon for new immigrants. Turks and Argentineans, Rus-
sians and Persians, French and Mexicans. We shared a utopian vision, a
dream of something as yet ill-defined, the challenge of deconstruction
amid reconstruction, the syntax of a new life. We shared a common
language of broken Hebrew, which we studied five hours every day
(except Shabbat, holiest of the holy). We shared pita and hummus and
laban and gil, eschel and gveenah lavanah and lachmaniot, at the wood-
en tables in the cafeteria while we awaited the next chapter of our new
life.
***
I dreamed about Morris (Moshe) Heimovitch. My grandfather is
walking down a deserted street. It is pitch black and he cannot see
where he is going. He stumbles on a sharp object and falls. There is no
one there to help him up. When I awake, my eyes are moist. I search in
the darkness for a tissue.
After months of personal disorientation and adjustments, I thought I
might write a book on immigration, a how-to manual for olim chada-
shim entitled Surviving the First Year in the Homeland. It would be
devoted to a theory of change: the climate, the chemicals in the air, the
food, the routines, the water, the foreign language; and it would be
dedicated to the memories of Moishe Heimovitch and Hymie Rabino-
vitch, the first pilgrims of my family. The pages of an empty notebook
may still lie in a drawer in a maon (residence for new immigrants) in
Ramat Aviv.
Malkah continued to emerge, grow, and expand. A woman uncon-
strained by city fences, unencumbered by stale relationships. I explored
the body of this homeland with the attention and care of a woman in
love. I studied its landscape . . . the water sites, the hills, the deserts, the
seashores, and the plains. I explored its mountains and valleys, river-
beds and deserts. I took in the cliffs at Nahal Darga; I stood under the
waterfall at Ein Qilt; I toured the oasis at Ein Gedi. I hiked along Nahal
Zohar and Nahal Perazim; I climbed Har Sedom and descended to the
springs at Ein Yorqueam. And when I was ready, I went up to Jerusa-
lem, the heart and soul of this enchanted landscape.
***
One morning in early July, after two years of work and travel, I
decided to leave Israel. I remained silent about my decision for a week.
I did not tell my colleagues, my friends, my lover. Instead, I made the
necessary arrangements in secret, and when I had confirmed a date for
departure, I began the process of separation and detachment.
At a farewell party, my boss, Shoshana, put her arms around me and
whispered her best wishes into my hair. My friend Leon insisted we
agree to meet in the merkaz in Rechovot in five years. It will be like a
reunion, the same place we first bumped into each other over a heap of
persimmons. Leah, Tal, Dahlia, and Yosefa took me out to dinner in
old Jaffa, to the fishermens restaurant by the sea. There they presented
me with a pair of silver candlesticks, and the wrapping tissue turned
damp from the sea air and the emotion of farewells. Chaim did not ask
questions; he did not ask for an address in Canada.
I took a taxi to Ben Gurion Airport, working my way through the
channels of bureaucracy. I could afford to be patient with the El Al
ticket agent who talked too loudly, demanding my papers of identifica-
tion, my luggage, my old immigration forms. With amused sarcasm, I
asked her, Whats the rush? raising my shoulders in mock imitation of
an Israeli standard. My boldness offended her. She thrust my passport
across the counter so that it slid onto the floor. Gate seven. Straight
ahead! she shouted.
132 CHA P TER 12
Malkah did not board the plane; she remained somewhere on the
tarmac, waving shalom as Mavis mounted the metal staircase and en-
tered it.
***
It is not uncommon for celebrities and people in the arts to change
their name. For some, a certain flair, a quirkiness, a memorable rhythm,
a sexy innuendo communicated in a name invites fame, commercial
success. For others, a name-change is an attempt to conceal an ethnic-
sounding name that may be considered too difficult to pronounce or
remember.
In many cases, especially after the Second World War, when the
world was still fraught with the slander of anti-Semitism and deep-
seated prejudice, name-changing was considered a concession, a facili-
tation for access to certain professional or environmental settings.
Think of such celebrities as Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan;
Benjamin Kubelsky, aka Jack Benny; Simone-Henriette Kaminker, aka
Simone Signoret. The number of Jewish men and women who adopted
Christian names is endless. Is it surprising that Walter Matasschanskay
would change his name to Walter Matthau or that Allen Konigsberg
would choose to become Woody Allen?
In the field of literature, some pen names are fairly well-known.
Many know that Mark Twain was the alias of Samuel Langhorne Cle-
mens, George Eliot of Mary Ann Evans, Ayn Rand of Alisa Zinovyevna
Rosenbaum, and C. S. Forester of Cecil Smith.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson adopted his pen name Lewis Carroll in
1856 because, according to the Lewis Carroll Society of North America,
he was modest and wanted to maintain his privacy. When letters ad-
dressed to Carroll arrived at Dodgsons offices at Oxford, he would
refuse them to maintain anonymity. Dodgson came up with the alias by
Latinizing Charles Lutwidge into Carolus Ludovicus, then loosely An-
glicizing that into Carroll Lewis, and then changing their order. It was
chosen by his publisher from a list he offered of several possible pen
names.
Jzef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski is a bit of a mouthful. When the
Polish novelist began publishing his writings in the late 1800s, he used
an Anglicized version of his name: Joseph Conrad. He was reprimanded
for this by Polish intellectuals who thought he was disrespecting his
homeland and heritage; they thought so all the more when he subse-
quently became a British citizen and published his books in English. As

Korzeniowski explained:
It is widely known that I am a Pole and that Jzef Konrad are my two
Christian names, the latter being used by me as a surname so that
foreign mouths should not distort my real surname . . . It does not
seem to me that I have been unfaithful to my country by having
proved to the English that a gentleman from the Ukraine (Korzeni-
owski was an ethnic Pole born in formerly Polish territory that was
controlled by Ukraine, and later the Russian Empire) can be as good
a sailor as they, and has something to tell them in their own lan-
guage. 2
Ricardo Eliecer Neftal Reyes Basoalto (another mouthful) had an

interest in literature from a young age, but his father disapproved.
When Basoalto began publishing his own poetry, he needed a byline
that wouldnt tip off his father, and so chose Pablo Neruda in homage to
the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Basoalto later adopted his pen name as his
legal name.
When Eric Arthur Blair was getting ready to publish his first
book, Down and Out in Paris and London, he decided to use a pen
name so his family wouldnt be embarrassed by his time in poverty. He
chose the name George Orwell to reflect his love of English tradition
and landscape. George is the patron saint of England, and the River
Orwell is a popular sailing spot that he loved to visit.
In a recent review of Salman Rushdies new memoir, in which he
reinvents himself as Joseph Anton, I learned that Rushdies father, a
non-practicing Muslim, changed his fine old Delhi name to Rushdie in
homage to Ibn Rushd, the twelfth-century Spanish polymath who wrote
commentaries on the work of Aristotle 3 and who coincidentally wrote
convincingly of rationalism over Islamic literalism, eight hundred years
before the tumult over The Satanic Verses.
And only recently did I read in a glossy tabletop book that the master
designer of the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), Disney Village
(France), the Olympic Fish (Barcelona), the Serpentine Gallery (Lon-
don), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) was born Owen Gold-
berg in Toronto. In 1954, at the age of twenty-five, he dropped his
Jewish-Polish name and became Frank Gehry, but it was not until years
later that he became the demiurge of the architectural world.
134 CHA P TER 12
While some artists struggle with the traumatic impact of mental

illness and premature deaths, family chaos, and dysfunction (e.g., Hen-
rik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Tru-
man Capote, and Graham Greene), others feel choked, stifled, and
thwarted in their creative potential by the coils of their family identifi-
cation. They require and desire a new name in order to begin from an
anonymous start. With the name-change comes a burst of productivity.
For these men and women, the refusal of their family heritage induces
and inspires their creativity.
When Franois-Marie Arouet was imprisoned in the Bastille in the
early 1700s, he wrote a play. To signify a rupture with his past, especial-
ly his family, he signed the work with the alias Voltaire. The name, the
Voltaire Foundation explains, was derived from Arouet, the younger.
He took his family name and the initial letters of le jeuneArouet l(e)
j(eune)and reformulated them into an anagram. (In Voltaires
day, i and j and u and v were typographically interchangeable.)
Some artists are unable to put their name to their creations, their
signature being infused with too many disturbed and disturbing memo-
ries and associations. Their work allows them to forge a new name.
Sometimes the invention of a pseudonym coincides with the invention
of a new work. The creation of oneself and the creation of art.
For Vincent van Gogh, whose history of illness, both mental and
physical (temporal lobe epilepsy, severe depression and anxiety, and
lead poisoning, among others), is well-documented, a forfeiture of his
name was necessary. It is possible to speculate about the meaning of the
absence of his signature. Vincents older brother, also named Vincent
van Gogh, had died at birth shortly before his birth. Vincent felt his
name had already been taken and therefore could not be used again
by the surviving sibling. His suicide at the young age of thirty-seven was
the culmination of a painfully challenging life. He produced over nine
hundred paintings, along with many volumes of letters, but only one
painting had sold during his lifetime. It was only after his death that he
became famous, thanks to the dedication of his sister-in-law, Theos
wife, Johanna.
Fanny Mendelssohn, later Fanny Ccilie Mendelssohn Bartholdy,
and then, after her marriage, Fanny Hensel, was the sister of the com-
poser Felix Mendelssohn. Fanny was a talented German composer in
her own right; however, due to the prevailing attitudes towards women
in the 1800s, she was prohibited from publishing her material, as is so

explicitly noted in a letter written by her father in 1820: Music will
perhaps become his [i.e., Felixs] profession, while for you it can and
must be only an ornament. 4 Instead, her brother agreed to publish
some of her compositions under his name, a practice that was not un-
common for many women artists of that period.
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of
Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and womens
rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Ulster County, New York,
but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to
court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win such
a case against a white man. Hers is the familiar but tragic story of an
early life indentured to multiple slave owners. Truth was one of the ten
or twelve children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree. Her father
was an African captured in modern-day Ghana, and her mother, also
called Mau-Mau Bett or Betsy by the children who knew her, was the
daughter of enslaved Africans from the coast of Guinea. In 1806 nine-
year-old Truth (known as Belle) was sold at an auction with a flock of
sheep for $100. Truths name-change was a shorthand for her lifes
mission.
***
Deliberate name-changing can also be an attempt to efface any traits
of a previous social standing. The endeavor to rise to a new-found fame
has been repeated throughout history: Ioseb Besarionis dze Dzhu-
ghashvili, aka Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin; Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
aka Leon Trotsky. These names were chosen for their linguistic and
semantic appeal.
Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg was the
birth name of the German-born Russian empress Catherine II, also
known as Catherine the Great. After her conversion to Eastern Ortho-
doxy, having immigrated to Russia, she received the name Catherine
(Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the artificial patronymic Alexeevna (Alek-
seyevna, daughter of Aleksey). Like her male counterparts, her name-
change permitted a certain repositioning of social status and position.
And like the politicians and leaders who wish to embellish their
social standing with an impressive honorific or mononym, so too do
those who wish to rise above a corrupt past. An article in the New York
Times exposed an impostor and confidence man, Christopher Chiches-
136 CHA P TER 12
ter, aka Christian Gerhartsreiter, who had adopted the name Clark
Rockefeller. Through his role-playing with this new name, doors had
been opened and a new identity had been conferred on the soon-to-be
convicted criminal.
***
Voluntary name-changing frequently occurs when men and women
remove themselves from the tumult of everyday life or follow a religious
calling. When a woman enters a convent or a man a monastery, choos-
ing to enter a religious order, be it Christian or Buddhist, the change in
status is marked by the ritual act of a change in name. Customs vary
across religious congregations as to the manner of name assignment. In
some cases, new sisters suggest their own name preference, such as
their favorite saint, the name of a parent (if it is a saints name), or a
saint after which they would like to be named; in other cases, the name
is chosen by a leader, which could be the name of a sister who had died
in the congregation or the saint for which the parish is named. In all
cases, final approval rests with the superior of the community. Typically
a saints name or a title of Mary or Christ is chosen.
Priests in most religious orders (e.g., Dominicans, Redemptorists,
Passionists) who take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience similarly
change their names and assume a biblical or saints name. A priest in
charge of a diocesan church is not required to change his name and
generally assumes the name of Father plus his given name (e.g.,
Father James, Father Bob).
Name-changes and the assignment of titles are also practiced within
Buddhism. My colleague tells me that, while variations occur across
different schools and different traditions (Japanese, Tibetan, Korean),
in one particular school of Zen Buddhism, gradual stages of progression
are marked by name-changes chosen by the Zen master. At the Kwan
Um School of Zen, both Koreans and non-Koreans acquire these
names: Nancy Brown became Zen Master Dae Bong, Gye Mun Sunim
became Zen Master Bon Haeng, and Barbara Rhodes became Zen
Master Soeng Hyang. Those who have studied and become dharma
teachers are given a title as well as a new name. Ji Do Poep Sa Nim, or
JDPSN (Korean for dharma master), would be given to a student who
has been authorized to teach kong-an practice and lead retreats, where-
as the title Ji Do Poep Sa, or JDPS, would be assigned to teachers who
are monks or nuns.
The legendary South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah

Ibrahim was born Adolph Johannes Brand. With a modified anagram of
his name, he became known in the music world as Dollar Brand, play-
ing in the Dollar Brand Trio. It was only after his spiritual conversion to
Islam in his forties that he changed his name officially to Abdullah
Ibrahim.
The precedents for spiritual transformations associated with renam-
ings are scattered through the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In
each of these cases, the change in name is imposed, not self-chosen.
Before his conversion to Christianity, Saul of Tarsus was a Jewish
rabbi, a zealous Pharisee who persecuted the followers of Jesus without
remorse. On the road to Damascushis plan was to persecute any
Christians that he might find in the synagogues thereSaul was struck
down by a light that left him blind. He heard the voice of Jesus in a
vision and was informed to go to Damascus, where he would be told
what to do. Jesus called out to one of his disciples in that city named
Ananias and commanded him to attend to Saul, who had been fasting
for three days. Ananiass response is well known:
Lord, Ananias answered, I have heard many reports about this

man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem.
And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest
all who call on your name.
But the Lord said to Ananias, Go! This man is my chosen instru-
ment to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the
people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my
name.
Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands
on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, the LordJesus, who appeared to
you on the road as you were coming herehas sent me so that you
may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately,
something like scales fell from Sauls eyes, and he could see again.
He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained
his strength. (Acts 9:1319)
With this transformation, Saul, whose home town was Tarsus, the
capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia, and who was the son of a
Roman citizen, assumed the Roman cognomen Paulus and became the
138 CHA P TER 12
Apostle to the Gentiles, famed for his doctrine and teachings, captured
in the epistles he wrote to the churches he founded.
***
Many centuries before Paul, Abram, son of Terah, sits in his tent.
His father has encouraged him to begin a move from the city of Ur to
the land of Canaan, but they have stopped at Haran. Who was this man
to whom God appeared? We have few facts. We do know that after
seventy years of a mundane existence, living with his barren wife Sarai,
performing the daily rituals of his life, he is visited by God.
This righteous man hears a voice. It is a call to which he must
respond; he must say yes or no to the trial presented to him with all the
sacrifices such a decision will entail. He is challenged to accept the
summoning. (Here is another example of a call[ing] that demands a
response.) He must leave his country, the native land of his extended
family and the house of his father; he must travel to a new land to which
he will supposedly be directed; and he must establish a new life for
himself and his family with no promise of future certainty or stability.
Lech lecha, God commands. Get thee out, or go, leave, in the
sense of separating or taking leave of. So Abram begins a journey, an
internal and external passage that will become an emotional and spiritu-
al disengagement from his father and a break from the bonds of his
fathers house. Abram rarely settles down; he is in constant movement:
coming to Canaan, going down to Egypt, going south again, then north
to Beersheva, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to Jerusalem to sacrifice his
son, and to Hebron to bury his wife.
When he is ninety-nine years old, God appears once more, and again
Abram is humbled by the presence of this divine force and forced to
hear the call. And these mighty words echo through the generations in
the hearts and souls of all children of the desert: As for Me, this is My
covenant with you: You shall be the father of a multitude of nations.
And you shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abra-
ham, for I make you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make
you exceedingly fertile, and make a nation of you; and kings shall come
forth from you (Gen. 17:4).
Sarai, the wife of Abraham, remained childless for a very long period
of time. For safe passage, Abraham passed this beautiful woman off as
his sister and gave her as a wife to the Pharaoh of Egypt. Later, she
encouraged her husband to bed Hagar, her Egyptian handmaiden, so
that through her, Abrahams kingdom may be built up. After Hagar
gave birth to Ishmael and was told by an angel that her seed would be
numerous, Hagar returned to Sarai.
It was after Ishmaels birth that God once again appeared to Abram,
telling him not only that his name would now be Abraham, but that
Sarais name would also be changed: As for your wife Sarai, you shall
not call her Sarai. I will bless her and indeed, I will give you a son by
her (Gen. 17:15). Abraham burst out laughing at the thought that his
ninety-year-old wife would bear him a child, and so his son was named
Isaac (Yitzchak), which means he will laugh. Isaac is the only patriarch
whose name would not be changed.
***
The story of the patriarch Jacobs nocturnal struggle by the river
Jabbok is also well-known. Isaac, the second patriarch, was rumored to
have favored Jacob over his older twin, Esau. Esau (which means
hairy) was so named by his mother, Rebecca, because at birth he was
red all over like a hairy garment. The younger twin, Jacob, had been
born with his hand grasping Esaus heel, as if he had been trying to pull
Esau back into the womb so that he could be the firstborn.
To supersede his brother and in collusion with his mother, Jacob
stole his older brothers birthright by pretending to be Esau, receiving
the blessings of inheritance from his father in his place. Note that Jacob
derives from the letters a-k-v, which can be read as akev, meaning
heel, a reference to his holding his brothers heel at birth, but also
akov, meaning crooked, an allusion to this impersonation of Esau to
steal his brothers birthright. Many years later, after incurring his broth-
ers wrath, Jacob returned to his home in Canaan with his large family
and sizable livestock. There he enlisted Gods help as the impending
meeting with his brother drew nearer and his fear increased. He show-
ered his brother with gifts of flocks of camels, sheep, and cattle, sending
his family ahead to cross the river while he stayed behind for the night.
It was then that he was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until
the break of dawn (Gen. 32:25).
Commentaries abound on this ambiguous encounter between Jacob
and this other with whom he has striven, referred to at first as a man
and later as beings, divine and human. Scholars point out that the
man may have been Esau, the Prince of Esau, or the heavenly angel
assigned to Jacob, his own inner being, or the angel of God. In any case,
140 CHA P TER 12
it was this mysterious adversary who could not free himself from Jacobs
clutches and who asked of Jacob his name. When he replied Jacob,
the other said, Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you
have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed (Gen.
32:29).
Israel derives from the root sar and serarah, which connote power
and authority and which imply perseveres with God. It is interesting
that Jacob also asked his adversary his name and the other replied,
Why do you ask my name, for it is unknowable, suggesting that the
wrestlers name was the name Jacob gave to the site, Peniel, or the face
of God, because I have seen God face-to-face, yet my life has pre-
vailed (Gen. 10:10).
***
It is not uncommon today for people to acquire new names. Within a
parade of alternative festivalsreligious festivals, pagan festivals, arts
and crafts festivals, pioneer festivals, and Renaissance fairs, with such
exotic names as the Shambala Festival featuring music and art in North-
amptonshire or the Green Man Festival of music, art, and theater nes-
tled in the enchanted forests of Walespeople transformed by their
experience transfigure themselves through the symbolic act of changing
their name. Removed from the formal tradition of any religious or spiri-
tual order, these name-changes occur informally and at will. They are
attempts to signify a new beginning and an alternative or altered per-
sonality.
A yoga teacher informed me that her name was Ananda, a name
given to her by a yogic spiritual leader. My guru chose this name for
me at a ten-day retreat. I did not question this choice, but accepted it
very willingly. I was honored. However, when I told my parents, they
struggled with this and still call me by the name they gave me at birth,
which is Rebecca. Another man told me about his bosss friend who
had visited a psychic when her luck took a consistently negative turn.
The psychic apparently told her that she would have to change her
name in order to reverse her fortune. She then went on to give the
woman a new name with the appropriate energy but with a very
particular spelling: Dyann (instead of Diane).
A friend of mine sent me an article that she had come across on the
Internet with the headline When the New You Carries a Fresh Iden-
tity, Too. Like the search for eternal youthfulness touted by the mar-
keters of the cosmetic industry, the search for everlasting happiness is

now being promised by a name-change, a simple act of self-direction.
The twenty-six-year-old Cheryl Strayed, ne Nyland, created her sur-
name around the time of her divorce. Caught up in a time of personal
turmoil with the loss of her mother a few years earlier and a pending
divorce, she decided that the lack of attachments provided her with an
opportunity to redefine herself. As Strayed, author of the best-selling
2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,
explained in the article:
Naming myself was symbolic in many ways. It signified to me how it

was I had to take full responsibility for my life. I had to create my
own happiness, to build my strength, to be the engine of my momen-
tum. Choosing my own name struck me as both a positive act and a
powerful one during a time when I felt uncertain and weak. 5
While women have increasingly opted to keep their maiden name

after marriage, challenging the Western tradition of assuming their hus-
bands surname, this particular trend of name-change among young
women is less about image-making or cachet and more about a new-
found freedom associated with a symbolic change. No longer bound by
the name of ones family or husband, they feel a kind of metamorphosis,
suggesting that, like the name-changing made by celebrities, the pro-
cess can be transformative and profitable. Perhaps even therapeutic? As
the article goes on to note, After all, arent we all celebrities of a kind
thanks to the so-called social media? 6
Many women experience a sense of freedom after an egregious peri-
od of marriage and divorce and immediately perform a symbolic act to
mark the end of an unhappy period and the beginning of a new, more
positive one. Men do not feel the same need to mark a change in their
life because they do not take on a new name in marriage.
Julianna Norrie, the owner and host of Maple Ki Forest Spirit Wa-
ters, a retreat center in a wilderness-like setting near a tiny hamlet in
southern Ontario, is a warm and open woman with a robust laugh.
When I met her, she told me that her maiden name had been Szeider
(pronounced like cider). Her family had immigrated from Germany
to Hungary in the 1700s; it was likely, she said, that her name had been
changed in the course of the familys travels, Sz being a typical Hungar-
ian spelling for S. During her adolescence and young adulthood, she
142 CHA P TER 12
had been called different names by friends and relativesJulie, Judy,

and sometimes Juliana. When she and her husband divorced, she made
a decision to return to her birth name, Juliana, changing the spelling to
Julianna.
No more Julies or Judys, she said. I like to call everyone I meet by
their full name. So if I meet a Mike, I call him Michael, or Pete, Peter.
At the same time, I decided to keep my husbands surname, Norrie, in
spite of the disappointed reactions from some friends and family. I feel
it flows naturally out of Julianna, and I like the soft sound of it. And,
hey, besides, having been macrobiotic for over fifteen years, it re-
minded me of nori, an edible Japanese seaweed that I was eating a lot
back then.
Name-changing can also be the portal to a new life in a new country.
It opens a door to new possibilities and infuses life with new hope and
potential. My friend Anastasiya, a Russian emigre now called Stacy,
described how she had modified her surname when she arrived in Can-
ada. For me it was to be a new beginninga new home, a new coun-
try, a new career, a new life. I did not want to be reminded of my
previous life, not that it had been bad. I simply wanted a fresh start, and
I thought it should also include a change of name.
Another young woman I met on a plane told me the following story
about her name:
I was the second-born child and the only child of my mothers mar-
riage to her second husband. She would go on to have a third child
with a third husband. While I was Canadian, I lived for many years in
France on a working visa while retaining my Canadian passport.
When I met the American man I thought I was going to marry, I
decided to move to the United States with him. However, getting a
green card was almost impossible, so my boyfriends father said he
would help by adopting me.
When my father, with whom I did not have a close relationship,
heard about this through my half-brother, he blew up. He felt com-
pletely rejected by me. Because his marriage had been fraught with
so much tension and acrimony, he interpreted my change in name as
complete desertion and abandonment. I tried to explain my reasons
for this action, but he could not be convinced, accusing me of pun-
ishing him like my mother had.
As a result of this guilt trip, I let it go and eventually I went to the

states on a temporary study visa for six months. The romantic rela-
tionship didnt last, so maybe it was not meant to be, as they say. I
had never wanted my father to feel punished by me. I guess I knew
my intent was honorable, but I guess he felt insecure in our relation-
ship.
This can be compared with the positive reaction by parents in the

following story of a woman I also met while on holiday. Her husband
had been named after his uncle (his fathers elder brother), who had
died tragically in the Second World War. The weight of this name had
struck her husband when he visited his uncles tombstone during his
adolescence. In bearing witness to the trianomen that he carried
William Stephan Tupkalhe felt a certain shame that he had not lived
up to the ideal set by his fathers brother and therefore the name he
carried, even though nothing had ever been said. After considerable
deliberation, he changed his name twenty years after he had been mar-
ried, adopting his wifes patronymic. So he became Tup William Mont-
gomery, thus incorporating the names of both families. Having never
had sons, his parents-in-law were thrilled to have someone to carry on
their name.
***
Sometimes name-changing can be a deliberate choice to hide an
ethnic identity, like the deliberate erasure of a history that is fraught
with intolerable weightiness and psychic pain. In these cases, the name
has become an encumbrance and curse. Such was the case with the
pioneers of my own profession, psychoanalysis. The father of psycho-
analysis was born Sigismund Schlomoh Freud but later dropped Schlo-
moh and replaced Sigismund with Sigmund to avoid anti-Semitic jokes
and discrimination.
Like Freud, Michael Balint, a notable Hungarian psychoanalyst, also
changed his name. Born Mihly Maurice Bergmann, this son of a prac-
ticing physician in Budapest, at the age of seventeen and against his
fathers wishes, changed his name to Mihly Blint, a popular Hungar-
ian name at the time. Subsequently, he also changed his religion from
Judaism to Unitarian Christianity. Other well-known Hungarian ana-
lysts also changed their names to more Magyar-sounding names, appar-
ently a trend at the time: Otto Rosenfeld, a protg of Freud, became
Otto Rank during adolescence, and Sandor Fraenkel became Ferenczi.
144 CHA P TER 12
According to one interpretation, Hapsburg Jews wished to change their

German-sounding names to more Hungarian-sounding ones during a
short period of national revival. Erik Erikson, acclaimed for his writings
on the stages of psychosocial development, was born in 1902 in Frank-
furt, Germany. His Danish-born mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came
from a prominent Jewish family in Copenhagen. At the time of her sons
birth in Germany, Karla Abrahamsen had not seen her husband, the
Jewish stockbroker Waldemar Isidor Salomonsen, for several years. She
decided to retain this mans name for her son, even though it was
suspected that Erik was his mothers child from an extramarital union
with a Danish lover (hence Erik).
In later life, the young psychoanalyst admitted to never having seen
his birth father or his mothers first husband. Eriks young mother
raised him by herself for a time before marrying a pediatrician, Dr.
Theodor Homberger. The fact that Homberger was not his biological
father was concealed from him for many years. In 1908 Erik Salomon-
sen became Erik Homberger and in 1911 was officially adopted by his
stepfather. The details of his birth were kept a secret from him until he
was an adult. Being a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy raised in the Jewish
religion, he was teased by the children at temple school for being a
Nordic; when he went on to grammar school, he was teased for being a
Jew. Later, in an independent gesture, he chose the name Erikson. It
was subsequently rumored that Eriksons theoretical preoccupation
with identity formation stemmed from concerns about his own past.
13
INVOLUNTARY NAME-CHANGING
Names travel. They come by rail, they come by steamship, they come
by bus. They come in pairs: mothers and fathers, husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters. They come in families, large and small, with
screaming infants, sniffling children, or reluctant teenagers; they come
in droves, and they come one by one. They come risking their lives or to
bury their pain in the soil of a new land. They come in flight from
oppressive regimes that dictate every movement and demand total alle-
giance and loyalty. They come to escape the persecution of war and
battle, the threats of violence and vice. They come to escape the sword
of dogmatism at their throats and the shackles of prejudice, racism, and
bigotry around their feet.
They come seeking a better life, for their children, for their grand-
children, and for their own remaining years. They choose to live, exiled
and in exile, coerced voluntarily and voluntarily coerced. They come
seeking the ideals of a democracy that guarantees them safety and free-
dom from harm. They come with tears of pain and tears of joy, pre-
pared to erase the past in a journey into the unknown.
They are the Boat People from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; they
are the Holocaust survivors from Poland, Germany, Austria, Romania,
Greece, and elsewhere. They are the tortured from Chile, Argentina,
and Uruguay; they are the victims of oppression from Iran and Iraq,
Syria and Palestine.
And with what do they come, these inquisitive settlers, these san-
guine immigrants on the run? With what do they fill their suitcases,
145
146 CHA P TER 13
their pockets, satchels, and backpacks? How do they choose what to

bring to a new homeland? How much time and energy went into their
decisions?
Some come treasuring a ring, a gemstone that belonged to a parent
or an aunt. Some come with one suitcase brimming with clothes and
linens, a dowry to bring to the country in which they shall now be wed.
Some bring a treasure: a tablecloth, a gold-threaded caftan, a sprig of
myrtle, a jar of sand.
Some come empty-handed, forced to flee with no memento, no
souvenir with which to reclaim the past they are leaving, choosing to
bury the suffering, the sleepless nights, the tortured lies and lying, the
falsehoods they can no longer swallow.
And some come with the name of a contact scribbled in a foreign
language on a scrap of paper tucked in a pocket.
***
At a bed-and-breakfast in Stratford, Ontario, I complimented the
hostess on the comfort of the pillows I had slept on.
Where did you get them? Are they a particular brand? I asked.
No, theyre just feather pillows, she replied quickly.
And as I took another sip of coffee, she added, No, wait a second.
Those pillows are special feathers, very special feathers. When my
grandparents were fleeing Hungary to Austria at the end of the Second
World War, fearing the onslaught of the Russians, my grandmother
wrapped her china dishes to take with her. Imagine! She packed her
chinaware and wrapped them with feather pillows and duvets to protect
them from breakage and stored them in trunks. In fact, my grandpar-
ents were stopped at the border and ended up in a German refugee
camp, but eventually made their way to Canada.
Later that morning I met her ninety-year-old mother, who con-
firmed the story in greater detail. Yes, we put those things in there to
protect what mama wanted to keep. It was what was so valuable to her.
The forced removal of people from one country to another, like the
herding of cattle, is the movement of the displaced, the dispossessed,
the tortured, the persecuted, and the oppressed. It is the torturous
removal of ones name and the adoption of another, a rebranding, that
can be for many the final step in a series of humiliating and disruptive
upheavals. Stories of survivors of such trauma abound in the archives of
I N V OLU N T ARY N AM E - CH A NGING 147
memoir, film, and poetry. They are the springboard for public aware-
ness and inspire social action.
But no matter from where and with what, they land on new soil, a
land that will become their new haven of hope. They come with dreams
and aspirations, their hearts filled with desire and faith in a better life
than the one they left behind. And no matter from which point of
departure, or whether legally or illegally (smuggled past guards at bor-
der crossings), they must arrive at a port of embarkation. And once they
arrive at their particular promised land, or at least better land, they each
carry a namea name that may be old or new, a name given them by
force, by conviction, or by convenience, but nevertheless a name that
will be inscribed on a piece of paper bearing a string of letters. And at
this port of entry, they will encounter a civil servant, an official, who will
take down the details of their demographics, recording that name, along
with their citizenship, language, and, in the past, ethnic origin and
religion. And they will leave that place of arrival classified and stamped,
approved of or denied.
Sometimes, a change in name occurs at a border crossing due to the
transliteration of letters from an unfamiliar script. Sometimes it is with
shock and awe that one discovers on a piece of official paper the
changed spelling of a name, a deformation in the familiar print of letters
that represents ones signature. But at that moment, there is no time for
misgivings. New life soon begins with the toil and demands of the
immigrant experience: the search for housing and a space to live; the
search for work to support a family who awaits abroad or lies sleepless
each night, tossing and turning with uncertainty and fear; and the
search for social contacts and for community to become introduced to
this strange and foreign culture. Days loom large with projects and lists
of things to accomplish. Hopes and dreams are replaced with frustra-
tion, irritation, and hardship. But for many, the immigrant experience
holds out the promise of a better life once the initial phases of accom-
modation and integration have been accomplished.
***
What is the experience of these newcomers? How does the lived
reality clash with the anticipation of promise and hope? What awaits in
terms of the livelihood and the economics not only for themselves, but
also for their children, those already born and those whose future lives
in waiting? And finally, what does one want and what can one change?
148 CHA P TER 13
These are some of the questions raised in an interesting book,

Changer de nom by Nicole Lapierre, a sociologist who undertook a
study on name-changes in France. Focusing on the situation of Jews,
North Africans, and Armenians in France during the 1900s, she consid-
ers the stakes and the costs of name-change for these immigrants.
While liberty, equality, and fraternity are the guiding principles of all
egalitarian societies, Lapierre discovered the reality is often different
from the expressed ideals. To carry an identity card with a foreign-
sounding name often translates into disillusion and disenchantment. In
the hopes of seeking refuge from countries of persecution and oppres-
sion, many immigrants she interviewed came with the aspirations of a
new life and a better world for their children. Instead, they encoun-
tered ongoing prejudice, closed doors, and explicit or implicit preju-
dice. After all, consider the following list of names: Witold Lutoslawski,
Jacques Finkelsztajn, Dikran Kouyoumijan, Abdelmalek Sayad, Mah-
moud Ben Addis, Anatolia Kernivachian.
To name is a rite of the collective, announcing admission to group
membership. To pronounce ones name is, in many cases, to automati-
cally reveal ones ethnic origin. For some immigrants, a renaming is a
clandestine rite of passage, an attractive alternative for those who have
been scorned or shunned or whose name has led to forced limitations
and exclusions. To rename is to escape being a discredit, to erase or
remove a stigma, to obliterate a difference, or to sanction an affiliation.
It is to establish admission to a society without the projected and often
real status of being a pariah, a second-class citizen or an outcast.
Imagine the agonizing ordeal that would lead a family to change
their name. Envision the determination to contest and oppose a dimin-
utive social status assigned on the basis of ones name. A refusal to bow
down to the tenacious stranglehold of racial intolerance and discrimina-
tion. A decision to reverse outrightly the respect for ones ancestral
name is to assert ones identity by alternate means. For these people,
the change to a banal and neutral name is a means of protection against
an oversimplistic or a priori reading of ones ethnic identity. In these
cases, is it possible that name-changing is a subterfuge, a subversion of
their identity for the quest of equality and freedom from the stigma of
prejudice?
In several of the vignettes recorded by Lapierre, we hear the voices
of young men and women who refuse to be so strongly identified with
their names, insisting that their ethnic identity goes beyond the label or
the name. In fact, they insist on the interiority of their identity, the
force of an internal singularity of heritage that cannot be removed in
spite of any attempts at erasure. Yet even by blotting out any overt
traces of ethnicity in their written or spoken name, they cannot elimi-
nate the power of their ancestry; the truth of their past inevitably re-
mains locked within. The historical examples of the Marranos, those
Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Spanish Inquisi-
tion who were forced into conversion but whose Judaism remained
concealed within the privacy of rituals, is only one of innumerable ex-
amples where a collective attempt at ethnic or religious erasure survives
within a community.
According to many individuals interviewed by Lapierre, the desire to
reduce racial and ethnic identifications interfering with opportunities
for success in xenophobic societies outweighed any attachment to an
ethnic-sounding name. In my encounters at work, I have learned that
Canada is not exempt from such prejudice and discrimination. Several
of my patients have modified and shortened their names, eliminating
the awkward and strange-sounding mixture of consonants. They claim
the Anglicization of their name made a huge difference when seeking
employment and applying to university.
***
On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, my friends, family, and I
sit around the table after a traditional meal of roast chicken and gefilte
fish, honey cake and apples dipped in honey. We wish each other the
hopes for another year of health, happiness, and creativity. We offer the
blessings over candles and bread and wine.
We can now sip, feast, and schmooze, a group of friends sharing an
annual ritual. This year, I cannot refrain from mentioning my writing
project on the name, and in no time, there are more anecdotes.
You know, my father was one of eight children who all escaped
during the war at different times. Each of them carries a different
name.
***
I just learned about the original spelling of my name. I always
thought it had been Klezner, but I learned that originally it had been
Kleszczynska. Somewhere along the way, it was changed because it
was too difficult to pronounce.
150 CHA P TER 13
***
My uncle had a very long name with five consonants in a row. The
port authority said to him: Too long; make it short. He and his five
siblings now share the surname Short. So now I am beginning to
wonder about the popularity of this common surname.
***
I had an Italian friend whose father changed his name to a more
Jewish-sounding one when he arrived in Canada. Hows that for a
switch? He went from Franco Adamoli to Frank Adam, modifying
his name by dropping a few letters. Years later, no longer ashamed of
his Italian heritage, in fact quite the contrary, he reverted back to the
original name.
***
I remember hearing about the story of a community of Jews from
Russia who wanted their children to have English-sounding names in
order to be more easily assimilated into North American culture. As
a result, sons were named Marvin, and within a short time, the name
Marvin became associated by these new communities with Russian
Jews. Just proves how difficult it is to erase ones ethnic identity.
***
I know a young man who told me the story of his family name
Steinberg, which translated in English would mean mountain of
stone. His paternal grandfather of Polish descent had emigrated to
Israel and when his Israeli-born father married a sabra [native Israe-
li], he decided to change his name to Har-Even, a literal translation
from the Polish. [In Hebrew, har means mountain and even means
stone.] This young man was planning to remove the hyphen, con-
densing it to Hareven, because he said it felt too split. He may even
consider a further modification of his name, as he feels the name
does not suit him. Hes a sensitive and thoughtful person and claims
he does not like the heaviness of its sound or meaning and one day
plans to remove the weight of the stone [even] by shortening the
name to Haran. Haran is a biblical name: It was the name of Abra-
hams brother, a man whose roots are common to the ancestry of all
Jews, including Jesus, as well as a toponym for the place Abraham
and his father temporarily settled on their journey from Ur to the
land of Canaan. It translates into English as mountaineer, an active
name suggestive of movement and strength.
Jackie reminds us of the legendary tale no longer known whether

fabled or real. An elderly Polish Jew has been advised to choose an
American-sounding name when he arrives from Warsaw so that the civil

state authorities will not incorrectly translate his name. He asks advice
from a baggage handler, who proposes the name Rockefeller. He re-
peats this name several times, but when he arrives at the desk of the
officer in charge, he cant remember it. When asked his name, the
elderly Jew replies in Yiddish, Shoyn fargesn! (Ive already forgotten
it), and so he ends up with the very American-sounding name, with
Gaelic origins: Sean Ferguson.
We laugh, we joke, we share stories of name-changes, we who live in
a democratic country where freedom to change our names at will is
written into law.
A few months after this evening, one of my friends e-mailed me an
article on name-changing that had appeared in the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz. The article highlighted the trend of both European Ashkenazi
and Mizrachi (of Middle Eastern or North African origins) Jews to
Hebraize their surnames. According to Professor Aaron Demsky,
founder and director of the Project for the Study of Jewish Names at
Bar-Ilan University, Tel-Aviv, name-changing reflected the immigrants
desire to reject the diaspora and the names they were forcibly given.
After considerable thought and attention, even rabbis and high-ranking
politicians changed their names.
Most immigrants to Palestine from 1881 onward Hebraized their
patronymics as a way of turning the page and beginning a new chapter.
Like all new immigrants, they wanted to burn the bridges to the diaspo-
ra legacy with all of its baggage. In fact, I recently read that over 28,000
names were changed between 1921 and the founding of the state in
1948. The fathers of modern ZionismDavid Ben-Gurion (Gruen),
Levi Eshkol (Shkolnik), Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Perlman), Yitzchak Ben-
Zvi (Shimshelevich)apparently all changed their names in order to
express a kind of ideological identification with Zionism. Then in the
1950s, Ben-Gurion, as defense minister, insisted that anyone who rep-
resented the state of Israel in a formal capacity, such as athlete, a
diplomat, or a military man, had to have a Hebrew surname.
Demsky writes, The beauty of names is that they reflect changes in
history and fashion in a society. Each person carries with him historical
baggage that is reflected in names, but to a certain extent, a name is also
a matter of fashion. There are those people who in the throes of immi-
152 CHA P TER 13
gration and with the aspiration to build and fulfill [the Zionist dream]
said, Lets change our name. 1
I was initially struck by this cavalier attitude to names, as Jews have
always insisted on the importance of ancestry and lineage. However, as
Demsky also points out, surnames for Jews have never been sacred,
and, historically, changing them has occurred in the migrations of Jews
from place to place. A surname as a mark of social identification was
considered far less significant than it was to become later. For Jews,
what remained critical was that the Hebrew name still retain its primary
importance.
However, as we shall see shortly, this attitude towards name-change
is not shared by everyone. In fact, this articles viewpoint was not even
shared by all of its readers. One person angrily commented on this
facile shedding of names and history, raising the question, Who are the
self-hating Jews?
***
On October 18, 2009, at the Jewish Museum in Paris, and on No-
vember 13, 2009, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an interna-
tional and multidisciplinary colloquium was held on the question of the
proper name, sponsored by several French and Israeli organizations. A
documentary entitled Et leur nom, ils lont chang (And Their Name:
They Changed It) formed the basis of the colloquium, which culminat-
ed in the book La force du nom: Leur nom, ils lont chang. The docu-
mentary describes seven families who changed their surnames:
Fainzylber/Fazel
Wolkowiicz/Volcot
Frankenstein/Franier
Sztejnsztejn/Stenay
Finkelsztejn/Fine
Rozenkopf/Rosen
Rubinstein/Raimbaud
All of these families felt compelled to modify their names after the
Second World War in order to franciser (Frenchify) their name so that
their children could carry a name that would not identify them as Jews
and the families would be prevented from once again becoming victims
of anti-Semitism. What is significant is that several third-generation
children, those born with the changed name, participated in this docu-
mentary as a way of learning about their family names.
The Nazis eliminated the names of Jews and branded them with
numbers as a form of dehumanization. As noted by one author, killing
the bodies meant killing names, and killing names meant killing the
Symbolic. By killing the names, the Nazis amputated and sealed off the
flaws they perceived in the Jews. Although these name-changes re-
ferred to above were decided by the survivors, to prevent discrimina-
tion and harm, it is the offspring who are now challenging and question-
ing the masking of their identity through a name that conceals and
hides a part of their ethnic identity.
The dilemma is that the legal system in France, as in most European
countries, prevents the return to names that are consonance trangre
(foreign-sounding names). This has raised a number of questions re-
garding what it means to have a name that comes from abroad and what
it means to be a French citizen. Cline Masson, the principal organizer
and coeditor of the book La force du nom, emphasizes the inherent
importance of the accent of names. In a lyrical overture to the book, she
writes movingly about the singularity of each name in its sonority, the
uniqueness of pronunciation, the savor of the name in the mouth, the
literal vibrations of our own name voiced, and the names of others that
link us, through sound, to the weight of our ancestors. She adds that
names, like faces, identify us, reminding us that these names stick to
our bodies, and when we try to get rid of them, they return like signifi-
cant carriers of our origins.
In Canada and the United States, such a law does not exist and it is
possible for anyone to change their name at will, within the constraints
of certain legal procedures. Every American and Canadian citizen, and
every applicant for citizenship under those countries immigration laws,
is offered common-law, free-speech rights to take and use a name as
long as it is not offensive or confusing, does not incite violence or racial
hatred, or is not taken for some unlawful purpose such as fraud, flight
from the law, evasion of debt or bankruptcy, or the commission of a
crime. As long as the name is not a number, hieroglyph, or visual sym-
bol, the new name becomes as legal as the one given at birth.
Yet, especially when it has been imposed involuntarily or chosen
reluctantly, name-changes carry emotional weight. As discussed in the
colloquium mentioned above, the concealed original will emerge
154 CHA P TER 13
through the traces left behind, especially if the change was made ideo-
logically or forced politically.
In order to examine the impact, we must first ask some questions:
What is one hoping for by the changing of ones name? What does one
want or anticipate by such a dramatic and symbolic act? What are the
motives for the alteration? Are we speaking about a wholesale name
change or a modification in the spelling? Was the change imposed
under threat or duress, or was it voluntarily chosen and adopted?
When a name-change is tied to a historical event, a social situation,
or the affirmation of integration into society, the outcome is often favor-
able, especially for the generation who made the choice. Similarly,
when the change is motivated by the anticipation of obtaining a diplo-
ma, entrance into a professional life, moving into a new region, mar-
riage, and the prospect of having children, the stakes, while high, are
likely to be positive.
And yet, there are many who disparage and oppose any modification
for whatever reason. Given the high value placed on the patronymic in
our societymen die, but the name lives on, as someone once said
these critics claim that any alteration is a betrayal of ones family roots, a
disloyalty to ones ancestors. They accuse such individuals of a lack of
courage and bravery in the face of adversity, without acknowledging the
opprobrium and negative judgment that is often caused by carrying an
obscene or ridiculous surname, or one that puts a target on the back of
those whose ethnicity sets them apart. These critics fail to see that
modifying or changing a name is not the same as putting on a mask or
forging a new identity. It is a desperate attempt to overcome obstacles,
to acquire a passport for freedom from prejudice and to avoid chroni-
cally misplaced social and professional barriers. Pierre Pachet, a well-
known writer and university professor in Paris, paid tribute to his father
by breaking the silence of his fathers voice in his book Autobigraphie
de mon pre (Autobiography of My Father). Giving expression to an
imaginatively reconstructed life of his father, Pachet offered his own
interpretation of his family history, which is the story of the wandering
Jew.
His father, born Simcha Apatchevsky in 1895 into a Russian Jewish
family, finds himself in Odessa after the Russian revolution in 1905 (a
precursor to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917) and continues his travel
westward until he reaches Bordeaux in January 1914, becoming a uni-
versity student on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. He
lives there with his family, his wife giving birth to his son Pierre in 1917,
and dies shortly thereafter. Pachet writes, taking on his fathers voice:
My name is Simcha, which means joy in Hebrew. I cant prevent

myself from bringing this together with the name of one of my illus-
trious contemporaries, of whom I have been so critical, Sigmund
Freud for that is also the sense of his name [Freud means joy in
German]:. My son suggested another homonym: the Irish novelist
James Joyce, whose name would also have the same signification. I
attribute no other value to this trilogy [Simcha-Freud-Joyce] than
derision: it suffices to see our photographs, or my face, to understand
that these names did not bring us luck, unless you consider that the
joy stayed well hidden in us. An irony of destiny to which I am very
sensitive. Another point, my name is feminine, which exposed me to
a lot of jibes. 2
In the interview with Lapierre in Changer de nom, Pachet mentions

the announcement board written in his fathers script and placed out-
side his fathers medical office during the Vichy regime. In large, bold
letters, it broadcast to the public: Change of name. Docteur S. Pachet.
Ex-professor at the school of dental surgery and stomatology of Paris. I
respectfully inform you that from now on he carries the name of PA-
CHET instead of DApatchevsky. Pachet says the statement was in-
tended as a declaration of pride in the face of the political situation in
France, but also claims that it was a saving grace for him, adding, in his
own words:
The change of name is a chance, it simplifies, it detaches the imagi-

nary roots and permits one to be furtive, to pass to circulate . . .
Salman Rushdie once declared: I look at my feet, I dont see any
roots growing out of them on the bottom. The name, in any case, is
only a part of one branch of filiation, it is only attached to a branch,
not a root. But it is tied to the weight of familial patriotism, which in
itself is linked to a larger patriotism, that makes that one is, for
example, the Pachets . . . 3
Pachet, who has returned to the subject of his identity in several of

his writings, adds that he both does and does not completely inhabit his
name, that the change of name has created a sense of decentering for
156 CHA P TER 13
him. On the other hand, he claims that even if no one else is aware of
the original change, this is always a place where one can be master of
the name because only the bearer of the name knows the truth of it.
***
Name-changing seeps through the branches of the family tree.
Changes made under a shroud of secrecy, forbidden names forfeited
under threat of persecution, forced conversions made at the time of one
generationall filter down the limbs and branches. And like all secrets,
eventually, the truth is exposed. Children learn surreptitiously about
their family heritage. Clandestine research, furtive conversations made
at family reunions and gatherings, probes by the more inquisitive often
reveal certain truths about family history. Family secrets explode or
implode. They shock and disturb the familiar narrative.
Imagine the discovery of your namenot the one you have lived,
breathed, pronounced, and written; not the one that informs your being
with a particular texture of light and darkness. Imagine that you are told
that this group of letters you called your name is not your name because
the man you thought was your father is not in fact your father. When
confronted by an alternate reality, the solidity of the birth name, which
denotes a particular substantiality of beingthese lips, this hair, these
eyes, this body, which I inherited from my fatherundergoes a radical
upheaval.
The discovery of ones hidden ethnic roots, often linked to a mod-
ified or truncated surname, can also be a beneficial or informative self-
discovery. Dow Marmur, rabbi emeritus of Torontos Holy Blossom
Temple, wrote an article in a Toronto newspaper describing three types
of Jews: Jews by birth, Jews by faith (or conversion), and Jews by
surprise, or those who discovered their Jewish roots later in life and
only recently have come out with pride and interest. 4
Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Secretary of State, is one of the
latter. She was born in what is now the Czech Republic to Jewish
parents who apparently kept her Jewish identity and family faith from
her. Though she may have suspected it for a long time, it was only
recently that she decided to acknowledge it publicly.
A few years ago, the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada
hosted Romuald Waszkinel, a Polish priest and professor of French at
the Catholic University of Lublin. Waszkinel recounted that, as his
mother was dying when he was in his thirties, she told him that his birth
parents were Jews who gave him to her and her husband days after he
was born and hours before they were taken by the Nazis to the gas
chambers. When he finally found surviving relatives in Israel, he
pressed them for details about his family. He was allowed by Pope John
Paul II, who had been his teacher at university, to hyphenate his name
with that of his late father, Jakub Weksler. He now spends time in
Israel, where he continues to affirm his Christian faith while celebrating
his Jewish descent.
***
Many psychoanalysts, and particularly those of a Lacanian persua-
sion, are vehemently opposed to any change of ones name. They be-
lieve that tampering with any of the letters, such as the addition or
subtraction of a consonant or vowel, or the alteration of a syllable (for
example, the change in spelling from Sheila to Sheilagh or from Rosen
to Roazen) inevitably will lead to difficulties, if not in the generation of
those who initiate the change, then in those that follow. They claim that
any tinkering with a name creates a certain psychological instability that
reverberates within ones identity. For these analysts, the name is writ-
ten in ones body.
According to the French psychoanalyst Pierre Legendre, whose
work is cited in Lapierres book, this outright condemnation among
psychoanalysts arises from certain misreadings of the concept of the
name-of-the-father as discussed in chapter 11. As noted, this symbolic
function of the role of paternity is different from the social function of
the proper name (or patronymic) in general. These two concepts closely
overlap without being identical. Unfortunately, individuals whose deci-
sion to modify or change their family name based on a history of perse-
cution have been subject to criticism and prejudice by professionals and
nonprofessionals alike who have misunderstood and misapplied these
psychoanalytical terms.
Legendre reminds us that nomination and the act of name-giving
function differently in distinct cultures and societies and during distinct
historical periods. He points out that this rich diversity in the forms of
nomination does not interfere with the fathers role as a universal de-
nominator in its function; that is, that important third who intervenes
in the primary mother-child duo, instituting a kind of totemic princi-
ple or taboo. This paternal function creates not only a psychological cut
or separation between the mother and child, but also, with the assign-
158 CHA P TER 13
ment of his name, a symbolic cut that will not be lost. Even in cases
where the mother adopts the fathers name, she continues to carry, in
the presence of its absence, the name of her father, as we see in the
case of divorced women who revert to their maiden name.
In other words, while the patronymic system may vary from culture
to culture, being a variable method of naming, it serves a structurally
necessary role, as we saw earlier, in the psychic development of men
and women. Therefore, the disorder referred to by some analysts
occurs as a result of confusion between the system of naming, which
varies, and the necessary function of the paternal metaphor, which is
universal. Legendre argues that the fathers function ensures that the
name, modified or not, is still a master component in the montage of
filiation. The imperative to differentiate ourselves is, after all, an im-
perative of the human condition: one name for each of us.
I agree that changes to the proper name, that permanent inscription
in the history of the subject, cannot be modified without an impact, be
it major or minor, significant or inconsequential, but that personal im-
pact is not automatically pathological.
Name-changing in extremis is well-intendedto protect succeeding
generations from the weight of a name that has caused oppression,
persecution, and discrimination. Yet, today, family arguments flare and
recede. In some families, children accuse their parents of a deformation
and amputation of their names, while in others, children sympathize
and appreciate the sentiment under which the decision was made.
Some parents are horrified and hurt to think they are being faulted
when they were simply trying to save their children from undue pain
and suffering. They feel their children do not appreciate how, on the
basis of a name, one could be classified, declassified, or over-classified,
and that such verdicts could disqualify the bearers of these names from
equal opportunity in society.
Some adult childrenwhether they have attacked their parents for
selling out and giving in to the enemy or appreciate their parents
rationale and motivationshave decided to revert to their original fam-
ily name.
For example, a friend of mine whose name had been modified to
eliminate an Arabic sound felt that the new name was inauthentic and
somehow left a hole in the chain of affiliation or family connection. By
removing the ethnic syllable, she said, it removed a part of the ethnic
identity of my family. I know it hurts my parents to hear me say this,

after all the suffering they experienced in their past, but for me, the
change is a form of lie. I do not want to hide or conceal my identity.
Instead, I want to announce it to the world.
Meanwhile, some of those involved in this debate argue that it is
only the privilegedthose with the good fortune to have never expe-
rienced the full extent of racial hatred as manifested during and follow-
ing the Second World Warwho are in a position to be more public
about a name that exposes ethnic identity.
In my own case, the modification in the spelling of my familys name
led me to explore the roots of my fathers patronymic and to learn as
much as I could about the discussion surrounding this decision. My
father and his siblings chose to change the family name when most of
them were in their twenties and setting up their own businesses.
As a young adult, I liked the fact that my name concealed my Jewish
roots and that I could remain somewhat opaque in my encounters. I
smiled to myself when people thought I might be Mediterranean, en-
joying the exoticism that such origins implied. Later, I began to resent
the intrusiveness of questions about my identity and felt this informa-
tion was too personal to share with my inquisitors. Saying that I was
Canadian and so were my parents provoked quizzical looks. Caught off
guard by the question, I also knew what they were really asking: What is
your ethnic background?
In examining the repercussions of this modified name, I became
more aware of the way in which the concealment of my ethnicity led me
to make certain decisions and not others. While I seriously considered
putting back the missing letters of my name, for the time being I have
decided to leave it in its truncated form. One day, I may choose to
revisit this decision and revert to the original spelling.
***
Another category of voluntary name-change is sometimes ignored or
consciously dismissed: changes by those for whom the weight of their
name has become unbearableby the children of parents who, in the
name of some ideology, have committed abominable acts against hu-
manity.
Recently on the Internet I came across the work of the Israeli film-
maker Chonoch Zeevi, whose documentary Hitlers Children had re-
cently been released. Zeevis film investigates the lives of the children
160 CHA P TER 13
of Hitlers inner circle, bearing family names that evoke horror and
revulsion for acts that we equate with the incarnation of pure evil:
Himmler, Frank, Goering, Hess.
Bettina, the grandniece of Herman Goering, is perhaps the most
open and publicly known living relative of the Nuremberg group of war
criminals. A doctor of Oriental medicine, she said in an interview, The
eyes, the cheekbones, the profile . . . I look just like him. I look more
like him than his own daughter. 5 Following a troubled adolescence and
early adulthood, with several nervous breakdowns, Bettina made an
earnest attempt to cope with the legacy of guilt associated with her
name. Her odyssey to cleanse herself of the familys tarnished past
landed her in Israel, where a documentary, Bloodlines, about her rela-
tionship with a child of Holocaust survivors, was featured.
At the age of thirty, she underwent the drastic measure of having her
fallopian tubes tied for fear of creating another monster. Her only
brother, independently of her decision, decided to have a vasectomy.
While close to her brother, she is estranged from the rest of the family.
Its all a part of this guilt, she said.
Katrin, the granddaughter of Ernst Himmler and the grandniece of
Heinrich Himmler, the SS and Gestapo commandant and the man re-
sponsible for the execution of the Final Solution, is now an author,
notably of Die Brder Himmler: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte,
published in English as The Himmler Brothers: A German Family His-
tory. For many years she did not speak German outside of Germany. In
the film Hitlers Children, she admits to the ongoing shame and humili-
ation she feels. Her marriage to an Israeli man, the son of Holocaust
survivors, resulted in a complete rupture with her own family.
Niklas is the son of Hans Frank, Nazi Germanys chief jurist and
governor-general of occupied Polands German Government Territory.
From 1939 to 1945, Hans Frank instituted a reign of terror against the
civilian population, becoming directly involved in the mass murder of
Polish Jews. Niklas, a gifted writer and novelist best known for his book
In the Shadow of the Reich, now travels to German schools to dissemi-
nate the message of his book and provide forums for discussion. It is his
way of spreading his hatred toward his parents. Monika Hertwig (ne
Gth), the daughter of Amon Leopold Gth, the sadistic commandant
of the Plaszw concentration camp in Poland, describes the severe
beatings she received from her mother when she dared ask how many
Jews her father killed. She is also an actor in the film Inheritance (by
director James Moll, 2008), in which she narrates her family story and
her curiosity about her father and his past.
Many German men refused to accept their given name Adolph fol-
lowing the Second World War, choosing to use their middle name or
adopt a completely different one instead. I met a man who shared his
familys story with me. His parents, escaping their country, had sent the
children ahead to relatives already settled in Canada, and joined them
after the war following an arduous escape route through Europe during
the war. This man, now a grandfather, could not accept his given name,
Adolph, especially in a country where postwar Germany was considered
the evil enemy. Instead, he stopped using this name and became Bill.
I bleached out any possible association to my homeland, especially in
the community in which we had settled. I told my parents they would
have to just put up with my decision if they wanted me going to school
every day. Fortunately, they were understanding.
***
And finally, there is one more class of individuals for whom a name-
change is tantamount to a new identity. These are not the victims of
persecution, of prejudice, of racial hatred, or children of Nazis, fascist
monsters, or communist assassinators. These are not the wanted, the
convicted, or the thrill-seekers whose involvement in espionage or
undercover work has created a new identity for them. Nor are these the
artists and writers, superstars and superheroes of our culture whose
names are illuminated in the media.
No, these are the men and women whose lives are mentioned in the
Lives Lived column of Torontos Globe and Mail, whose stories are told
in the pages of other newspapers, the ones whose obituaries fill the
back pages of all newspapers, the ones who got up every morning and
like clockwork performed their everyday activities, coming home to
their families and loved ones or to their empty apartments. These are
the same men and women who struggle daily with the burden of de-
pression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and panic attacks. They could be
our friends or friends of our children or parents, the shopkeepers or
service people with whom we interact each day, the members of our
choir, our book club, or our fitness center, the men or women who
shuffle by our homes regularly to pick up a newspaper or a carton of
milk.
162 CHA P TER 13
The stories of these individuals are those most often encountered in

the privacy and confidentiality of the offices of social workers, psychi-
atrists, and psychoanalysts. For them, name-changing is one desperate
way of dealing with the weight of a family name contaminated by per-
sonal history: serious family dysfunctionality, including the depravity of
sexual abuse or incest. In these and other less extreme cases of family
degradation and humiliation, the symbolic and legal act of name-chang-
ing remains the only option to be rid of traumatic identifications.
In my own practice, I have treated an individual for whom, in the
course of his analysis, the weight of his name required of him a minor
modification in spelling, in order to create a distance or cut from his
family. He felt the persistence of this act to be the only way he could
successfully move forward in his life. Certainly, many other patients
have used their analysis as a means of exploring all the ramifications of
their proper name. As both a science and art of the particular, psycho-
analysis provides a space in which the history and narrative of each
person can be confronted. For the name we bear is not just inherited,
but inhabited.
14
A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
I own my name, for it is my own private residence. Like my physical

house, this dwelling has many rooms in which I can roam. Sometimes, I
choose to open the curtains and interact with the people with whom I
share my life; at other times, I close the shutters and retreat into my
space, seeking solitude and contemplation. At times, I venture into the
basement where I have placed the fragments and relics of my childhood
residence, that house which served as an underpinning for this current
one. Or I play with the toys in the attic, opening treasure boxes and old
chests of discarded dreams. I try on the fur hats and woolen coats
stowed away in a cedar-scented closet, wrapping myself in a past before
my time.
In the empty rooms of this home, I place the suitcases of mementos,
souvenirs, and reels of conversationsthe accumulated tokens of a life
spent at moments lying on a beach of a northern Ontario lake, working
in a childrens mental health clinic, relaxing on a rooftop in Istanbul,
living in an apartment with red and blue kitchen cupboards, driving to
an office building facing a laneway with daffodils sprouting every
spring. In the library are lined up the trove of books I have read and
continue to read. Here and there I pull out a book full of underlined
passages, those perfect sayings that have influenced my thoughts and
attitudes.
This house, truncated from the original before my birth, is the one I
inhabit, sometimes proudly and at other times reluctantly. Within these
walls reside my private space, a place of contemplation and unknown
163
164 CHA P TER 14
mystery. Facing out is the name I carry to welcome the world, Mavis
Carole Himes, the name of greetings and life stories. Facing in is Mal-
kah bat Leib vMiriam, my Hebrew name, the one used in rituals and
Jewish customs. And reaching out to me from the past is Malkah Hei-
movitch, my unabridged name, an inscription that marks my subjective
truth.
For all of us, the place from which we begin to speak, this intimate
house, is fundamental, creating a psychological foundation from which
we build our connection with the world. It is a developing space of
growth, a realm of familiarity, and a shelter that becomes our home. It
ensures that we each have a sphere of utmost intimacy, shaped by the
summary of our distinct memories and experiences. Surrounded by the
structure of our family with its particular cultural landscape and charac-
ter, anchored in the tradition of past generations, our name is initiated
through the rituals practiced by our ancestors and sustained by their
values over time.
As both a gift and an inheritance from our parents, we gradually
come to occupy our name as a unique personal dwelling place And yet
this house stands in relation to a community, a neighborhood in which it
has been built. As an inheritance, we make changes to our house, add-
ing personal touches and remodeling it to fit our purposes. Not without
conflict and indecision, ambivalence and doubt, we tear down and re-
build, modifying it to make it our own. And thus it is that, while given to
us as an inheritance, this house also becomes our home.
When we were adolescents, my sister, in fury over what she per-
ceived as an outrageous demand or complaint, would rail at our mother,
I didnt choose to be born! It wasnt my decision that you had me! So
now you have to deal with me and my shortcomings! I didnt choose
you, I didnt choose this family, and I certainly didnt choose this
name.
When we are born, we move into our parents home, our first place
of residence. This first domicile quickly becomes a physical and mental
space, the one in which we will build our foundation. Our initial state of
helplessness and defenselessness makes us totally dependent on our
parents with whom we share this first space. We move about the shared
rooms in an exchange of comings and goings. While our mother and
father are attuned to our physical and emotional needs and demands,
they too create demands, insisting that we comply with their rules.
A H OU SE I S N OT A H OM E 165
As we mature and require less of our parents presence, we move

into the other rooms, fastening onto the walls our banners and memen-
toes, the newfound souvenirs of encounters with friends and strangers,
trinkets found along the way. We begin to paint the walls of our rooms
with shades of our favorite colors from a newly discovered palette. We
stretch and flex our limbs, trying to reach the outer boundaries of our
house. We retreat into the basement or the attic as a place of solitude
and silence to escape the influence and constraints of those others with
whom we continue to live. We watch them troll the rooms, looking for
evidence of our independent means and ways, struggling between en-
couraging our endeavors and continuing to limit our freedom. We try to
make our mark; we struggle to create a spot, a space for ourselves that
we can call our own. This is my house with my signature written on its
walls. This is the house in which I celebrate my existence.
For most of us, the modeling and construction of this place that we
will call home is a long and arduous process. It entails construction and
reconstruction, temporary walls and false staircases, moldings and fix-
tures that are installed and then replaced. Yet the foundation is always
there: the basement of our dreams and hopes, the first stirrings of
desire, the echoes of those first embraces with the loved ones of our
infancy.
Sometimes, we wish to remove ourselves completely from our family
constellation. Sometimes, we want to imagine a different landscape
with pastel walls and multicolored carpets, or with bold paintings and
soft lighting. Or sometimes, we desire a family with different players.
***
When I was in grade two, I told my best friend, Susan Ritz, that I
had seven brothers living in Africa. I fabricated a list of names that I can
no longer recall. I created a host of characters that went along with this
imaginary family living several oceans away. Many years later as a stu-
dent of psychoanalysis, I discovered that I was not unique in my mus-
ings of a fabricated past.
Freud wrote about this exact phenomenon and called it the family
romancea personal fantasy and imaginary construction we create to
embellish or modify our family relationships and background. Some
may imagine they are the children of royalty adopted by parents of
humble origins, while others may believe they are the children of peas-
166 CHA P TER 14
ants rescued by wonderful godparents and brought to a kingdom im-

bued with riches.
Sometimes we play with the thought of a name-change as a game of
fantasy and possible intrigue. Sometimes we may even play with the
thought of being someone else, of being unfettered from our past with
its strong identifications and perceived constraints. When I was an ado-
lescent and staying with my sister and parents at a resort, I told a girl I
met there that my name was Rosa. I liked the sound of what reminded
me of a beautiful red rose. I maintained the false name until my sister
heard me respond to this name and broke the spell.
And when I was twenty-five and escaping the pain of a relationship
break-up, I traveled to Mexico for a sun-filled holiday adventure. High
above the clouds, traveling at eight hundred kilometers an hour, in this
no-mans-land where anything and everything is possible, I conversed
with the handsome man in the seat beside me, telling him, My name is
Maya. This name flew out of my mouth as if it had been there waiting
to emerge. Maya, the illusory veil of chimera, the exotic Hindu goddess
whose dance of multiplicities deceives and distracts us from lifes true
essence, tricking us into mistaking her movements for reality. Maya of
the Greco-Roman world, a goddess of the earth and the youngest
daughter of Atlas who shines with her sisters in the nights sky in the
constellation known as the Pleiades. Celebrated in her named month as
the goddess of spring and rebirth, the one who brings forth the tulips
and the daffodils, the fragrant cherry blossoms and the wild grasses.
Without any moorings to the land below, I was adrift on a flight of
fancy. I became a foreigner with a different passport, a manufactured
history, and a new identity. I was surprised at the ease with which I
could create and sustain a newfangled version of myself. When we
landed, I said good-bye to my flight companion and once again slipped
into the skin of Mavis Himes.
Today, the temporary forging of a new identity is a game commonly
played among men and women on the dating circuit. The social media
network with its tendrils of communication winds its way into daily
encounters and provides a facile way to create new identities. In this
world of aliases, genuine names are avoided to protect oneself from
harassment and the abuse of confidentiality. However, the anonymity of
a different or modified name also permits us to embellish our profile by
adding to or subtracting from our personal rsum.
***
Are we, in fact, bound to our name by duty or by desire? Is it a
blessing or a curse? Is it possible to remove our personal moniker and
assume another one? And if so, are certain psychoanalysts correct in
stating that a name-change always brings with it serious repercussions,
as suggested in the previous chapter? Is it possible to retain our proper
name and still change the identifications cemented to it by our history?
Can we lift the weight of a name that has become overburdened?
We have seen how our proper name is always an invocation or sum-
moning to life, a wake-up call to which we must respond. The catch or
snare is that this call, this beckoning to life, always comes from others,
typically our parents, preventing our choice in the matter and making
us susceptible to their desires. We are dependent on these adults, for
better or for worse, to determine our name, this appellation that will
stick to us like a second skin from birth to death. As we grow up and
have opinions about the way the world is or the way we think it should
function, when we begin to say Yes, I like this; No, I do not like that, we
rarely consider our name in such objective ways. We may not like our
given name and prefer to be called by our middle name, a nickname, or
a modified version of the original, yet we take for granted that this is the
name we will carry forward to the end of our time.
However, on a more profound level, the fact that our name comes
from others external to ourselves at a first moment and then must be
interiorized at a second moment, has certain implications. Not only
must we act in response to the call to life, but we also must appropriate
our name and make it our own. As Goethe writes, What that hast
acquired from thy fathers, acquire it to make it thine own. 1
We each must come to accept our name, making it our own. In most
cases this process is automatic, but not always without some struggle or
inner tension. By accepting and taking our name, we step into a com-
munal world of speech and accept the socio-cultural norms and rules of
convention represented by our parents and society.
The name bestowed upon us therefore forces us to acknowledge
certain positions that we may outgrow and change. In the course of our
lifetime, we may decide to question and challenge the positions of our
parents; we will re-create our own values and morality and voice our
opinions about the death penalty, hostage-taking, the battle of the sex-
es, and the causes of war.
168 CHA P TER 14
Can we perhaps say that in order to fashion it into something of our

own making, we must forget about our name and temporarily lay it to
rest? That we must forget the associations and identifications attached
to it, the desires and fantasies of our name-givers who had some vision
or idea of who they wanted us to become? That we must forge it into a
refuge of comfort and authenticity that becomes that safe home in
which we grow and develop?
We all hope to become as freethinking and freewheeling as we de-
sire. But can we? Is it so easy to establish our autonomy without being
weighed down by our name? By our identifications? By our family
values? By our symptoms and quirky behaviors? Are we not all forced to
accept the process of transformation required to inherit our name?
***
Names are rarely neutral. There is pride or there is shame; there is a
bond or there is a rupture; there is a positive association or there is a
negative dissociation: There is curiosity, there is gratitude, or there is
regret.
Some wear a distinguished name that easily opens doors. For them,
the proper name is an advantage, a blessing that requires and demands
nothing, which, on the contrary, automatically ensures prosperity and
triumph. The history of family success and a good family name are
fortunate attributes that are welcomed from birth. But is it possible that
the children of powerful men and women with renowned names not
only experience pride and honor but also self-doubt and inadequacy?
Do they need to establish themselves independently so that they can
put their own name on their actions and successes? And what exactly
does it mean to live up to ones name?
Royal families are certainly prisoners of their names. Consider the
fresh face of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, born Lady Diana
Frances Spencer, who seduced the world with her charm but whose
regal stature was sometimes questioned as a result of her behavior.
Currently in Canadian politics, Justin Pierre James Trudeau, the
eldest son of Margaret Sinclair and Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott
Trudeau (known simply as Pierre Trudeau), has been elected as leader
of the Liberal party. Trudeau the father, the fifteenth prime minister of
Canada, who held this office from the late sixties to the early eighties,
was the most acclaimed Canadian politician of his time both at home
and abroad. His multiple achievements, including the patriation of the
Canadian Constitution and institution of the Charter of Rights and the

introduction of the Official Languages Act, have been well docu-
mented. His legacy of personal idiosyncrasies have made him a contro-
versial figure, both revered and criticized.
In a recent newspaper interview, Trudeau the son claimed that his
father was extremely strong intellectually and academically, but it left
him a little short on some of the interpersonal skills, the emotional
intelligence. In the same interview, he described himself as the oppo-
site of his father, being strong on emotional intelligence and weak in
intellectual intelligence. 2 Comparisons of the two men are unavoid-
able: They are both fearless; they are both actors and performers. Tru-
deau Senior was a strong leader because of his educational and experi-
ential credentials; Trudeau Junior has a fiery personality that may or
may not be able to get things done. Is his name a blessing and a curse?
Will the Trudeau name turn out to be an advantage or disadvantage at
the voting polls?
At times we feel our ancestry is a prison from which we wish to
escape; at other times we hide behind these imaginary chains that keep
us locked into our comfortable patterns, excusing and blaming our fears
and resistance on family loyalties and the demands of allegiance. Some
of us cannot escape the tyranny of our distinction as Bob Sr. or Bob Jr. I
was reminded of this while reading In Red, a novel by the Polish writer
Magdalena Tulli. Describing the claustrophobic life of a community in
an imaginary small village, Tulli recounts the naming of a family of
townsfolk: The Looms married late. Their wives each gave them an
only child, a boy who was always given the name Sebastian. Each of
them was able at the right moment to replace his predecessor in such a
perfect manner that Sebastian Looms endured in the memory as a
single person. 3 No distinction, no possibility of creating an identity, no
will or possibility of escape.
You know, I have the same name as my father and my grandfather,
someone once told me. We are all John Emerson Black and we all have
the initials J.E.B. My father was called by his first name, but I am called
by my second name. There was nothing to distinguish me from my
father, so I insisted on calling myself Emerson. Funny, though, I gave
my son the same middle name and he gave his son the same middle
name. So now the Emerson lives on.
170 CHA P TER 14
I once read about a particular clinical case of a young woman in

treatment with a French analyst. The analyst describes how a mother
married to a man of a different culture and religion was determined to
name her son something that would represent this child for her, in
order to make her son hers and hers alone. She decided that she had
found the perfect nameAmoia name that would be the equivalent
of mine in English.
In my own practice, a patient of mine told me about her friend
Louise, nicknamed Lou, who named her firstborn son Louis and her
daughter, born two years later, Luella. We can imagine the confusion of
names that may arise from such similarities, where the abbreviation of
names would all be Lou, but we can also wonder about the motivation
and needs of a woman who needed to name all her children with names
that so closely resembled her own.
***
Juliet of Shakespearean fame is cursed with her name. For her, to be
a Capulet means to be prevented from her love affair with a Montague,
a member of a rival family. A long-standing history of feuds between
the two families casts a darkness over these star-crossd lovers. And so
we hear the plaintive cry of fair Juliet beseeching her new lover to
forego the bond linking him to his name:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or; if thou wilt not, be but sworn by my love,
And Ill no longer be a Capulet . . .
Tis but thy name that is my enemy,
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
Whats Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
Whats in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And, for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself. 4
Naive Juliet tries to convince her lover to change his name, forcing
him to accept the insignificance of this arbitrary grouping of letters, this
word forged of an indifferent convention. And Romeo, so besotted
himself, is prepared to reject his family name and vows to deny his
father and be new baptized as Juliets lover. Poor Juliet wants to
ignore the name branding of her beloved Romeo with its imposed re-
strictions. Not only does she wish to crush the weight of their family
names, but she also wishes to overcome the social mores and prescrip-
tions of a well-brought-up female of her time: chastity, submission, and
obedience. After all, Juliet was much more constrained in her expres-
sion of sexual desire or yearning than most women of her time.
In her own way and in her own wordsCome, gentle night: come,
loving black-browed night / Give me my RomeoJuliet smashes social
convention, rebelling against the confinement of her social class and
family values. Predetermined and arranged marriages were normative
in Elizabethan times, when this play was written, while family and dy-
nastic mergers were more typical of the Italian Renaissance. As a conse-
quence, the secret marriage between Romeo and Juliet would have
been forbidden. By indulging her desire and openly acting on her own
values, by defying the ancient grudge between the Montagues and the
Capulets, Juliet expresses the age-old conflict between old forms of
identity and new forms of desire, between the law of the father and the
desire of the individual.
In this way Juliet behaves very much like Antigone, daughter of
Oedipus and sister of Polynices, who, in the play Antigone, by Sopho-
cles, requests to bury her brother within the city walls. Since his actions
made him the aggressor in a fight with his brother Eteocles, Polynices
was forbidden to have a proper burial within the city. Antigone decides
to transgress the dictates of her uncle Creon, the king of Thebes, who
representing the law (nomos) of the polis, threatens her life should she
persist in her demand. In the end, by pursuing her desire, she also loses
her life. By defying the decree of the unrelenting king, she is appre-
hended at the burial site and condemned to exile in a cave by her uncle,
where she takes her own life by hanging.
In a different setting many centuries later, but with a parallel dilem-
ma, we can hear the melodies of poor Tevye, the iconic milkman in
Fiddler on the Roof, pleading with his daughters the necessity of follow-
ing tradition in a world of change and uncertainty. In trying to convince
172 CHA P TER 14
them, he appeals not only to a religious tradition, but also to a loyalty to

the clan or tribe. In the early 1900s in Tsarist Russia, the patriarchal
plea, no longer in this case related to an inheritance of nobility, but tied
to the tradition of ancestry, is another incarnation of the same message:
the binding power of familial expectations and the demands of ancestral
lineage.
The struggle is that each of us carries a desire to speak our own
voice, to write our own story, and to create our own signature, while still
acknowledging a debt to our past and our family history.
***
Alexander Stille is one of many authors who have written about their
struggles with their name and the turbulence caused by their family
history. The words that his sprawling history of his familys trek across
the 20th century is a study in the plasticity of identity caught my eye in
a literary review. According to this review, The Force of Things, a family
memoir by this American journalist and professor, uncovers clandes-
tine revelations of his family history that include multiple identities,
shifting and sliding within a certain indeterminacy. We read that, prone
to these oscillations and new appropriations of identity,
. . . his Byelorussian dentist grandfather covered up his background

and found a fraudulent way to make himself a pioneer of the Italian
nationalism movement through a conniving patient who was the mis-
tress of the Fascist poet laureate, Gabriele dAnnunzio.
His father didnt learn he was Jewish until he was twelve years
old, having assumed as he wrote Christmas letters to the baby Jesus
that he was a full-fledged Italian Catholic. But then, naturally
enough in wartime Italy, his almost accidental Jewishness became
the defining element in his life. Though he went to school with
Mussolinis sons and goosestepped in the blackshirt youth movement
that welcomed Hitler to Rome, he was still sent packing.
He was angry when he discovered that he was Jewish, says
Stille. And then ashamed at being angry. And then twenty years
later when courting my mother, he lies to her about being Jewish. He
feels a need to hide that side of himself to win approval. 5
But then we learn a more fundamental fact about this half-Jewish,

half-Italian memoirist. His father, Ugo Stille, began life as Mikhail
Kamenetski. Stille, the German word for silence, was a pseudonym
adopted by both his father and a close friend to conceal their true
identities to the readership of the Mussolini era. Even though his
fathers friend died, Ugo Stille retained the name. Alexander comments
on how his name, begun as a camouflage, artificially constructed be-
cause of certain events, became real once it acquired a history. He
continues to ponder the impact of this on his identity.
***
In the privacy of my consulting room, I hear the words of men and
women who are strained and constrained by the struggles of family
dynamics. Their words speak for themselves:
My mothers legacy was her mental illness. This is my inheritancea

disease that was undiagnosed, unnamed, untreated, and unacknowl-
edged within the family. My great-grandmother had electroshock
treatments in the forties, and then my grandmother took Lithium in
the fifties, and my mother was on Prozac in the sixties. My other
grandmother took enough Valium to be stoned half the time and
appeared at my aunts funeral like a complete zombie. And now I
have to take Wellbutrin and Clonazepam to stay stable myself.
So this is my family legacy. So why would I want to carry this
name? My surname is a noose. I want to detach myself from this
history. I wish my name were just Martha. Why do I have to carry
this name that reminds me of this weight that I do not want? I want
no surname so that I can just be me. Martha Blank. Martha with no
affiliation, no bonds, no expectations.
***
I grew up in the home of a strict Portuguese Catholic family. The
home was impregnated with magical beliefs. If you are not careful,
this will happen to you, my mother would always say. Be careful,
the evil eye is watching. Superstitious remedies and cures for a
number of ailments, talismans to ward off evil eyes, and amulets
strung about the houseall of these permeated the household
atmosphere.
When my mother announced that I would be cursed with bad
children if I did not behave as a good daughter, I believed that this
would be my fate. And so, in spite of my scientific training, I still find
myself falling back on certain of these irrational beliefs. Now that I
have three children, I still feel doomed. So now I end up always
feeling relief when negative things happen, as if I am ensuring that
these events will ward off anything worse. As long as I am somehow
174 CHA P TER 14
being punished, I know I am warding off anything else and I can

make sure that my children and I are safe from that godammed evil
eye.
***
My mother inherited my papas dirt, the permanent grime under
his fingernails, the calluses and rough skin on his hands, and the
smell of sweat coming home from a day at the steel plant. Not the
kind of washed-off dirt of a weekend gardener or the sexy colors of
an artists palette. No, this was the dirt and stink of poverty and hard
work, back-breaking and endless.
My mother was determined to lift herself out of that quagmire;
her fortitude and resolution, persistence and obstinacy, drove her
forward until she acquired a position of success in an advertising
company. I am not my mothers daughterI am weak and lack her
determinationbut I suffer from the guilt that I am not living up to
her name, the name of her success. I am not free of my name. It
carries the weight of my grandfathers toil and exertion.
A patient whose birth was nearly fatal to her mothers health was
given the name Lachesis (meaning destiny) by her father, a name
representing one of the goddesses of fate, chosen in gratitude for his
wifes survival. And what of my destiny, my fate? she wonders as she
struggles to come to terms with what she perceives as the weight of this
particular name.
My name is an exotic name: Lachesis. It is a name of hope, opportu-

nity, and optimism. I feel as though I can never fulfill the expecta-
tions of my name . . . And my middle name is Audrey after Audrey
Hepburn, but who can live up to that talent? Perhaps my mother
could, but I cant. I suppose my father hoped I would become like
her, but I didnt. If I had been a boy, I would have been named
Matthew, which means gift of love, but instead I am this fate of
destiny for my mother . . . My name separates me. Separation is like
death. I was over there, different. Even in my family, I was the odd
one out, like I wasnt supposed to be there.
Another patient, whose conflicts with her mother resurfaced in an

intense manner following her mothers remarriage, spoke in anger one
day about her given name. According to what she had been told, she
was named by her mother, who had already divorced her father prior to
her birth. As a result, she felt cut off from any connection or identity
with her biological father.
My mother gave me a name and then took it away, just like the
relationship with my father. She had it and then she ended it. She
had wanted to name me Scarlett after Scarlett OHara, the Southern
belle in Gone With the Wind, but then she thought that would be too
weighty a name to carry so she renamed me Nicole, or Nikki, as I am
now known. Why did she tell me this? It would have been easier if
she had never mentioned this fact to me, as now I still feel that I am
implicitly carrying the name of Katie Scarlett OHara-Hamilton-
Kennedy-Butler, the protagonist of that damned movie. I have
watched it so many times, and I cant say that I am attracted to this
woman who is outwardly confident yet inwardly insecure, seductive
and coquettish, yet shy and retiring. I have given up on men alto-
gether; its as if any attraction to a man makes me vampish or too
alluring. My affections are more directed towards women, although
even then I have some reticence.
***
In the washroom of a restaurant, I hear two women talking. As one is
washing her hands, the other is applying Chanel red lipstick to her wide
lips. Having accomplished a perfect application, she stares in the mirror
and says to her friend, When I was a kid, Marilyn Monroe was popular
and so my mother named me Marilyn. I always thought I had to be
glamorous.
We know that in spite of the inheritance of our name, there often is
a gap between the name we are given and what we make of it. Each of
us interprets and reinterprets the understanding of our history and
parentage, and the meanings we attach to our name. Fortunately, be-
cause of the unique status of the name as a signifier, the meanings
attached to it are fluid and have the capacity to be modified, or to use
another expression, the capacity to be disentangled from their original
signification or intent.
But how do we become free of the weighted history of our ancestry?
How do we maneuver through the heaviness imposed by our name, or
can we even do so? And how do we fulfill Goethes directive to appro-
priate our name? How do we engage with our heritage without being
weighed down by it? How do we break the chains of tradition, those
176 CHA P TER 14
customs, beliefs, and practices handed down from generation to gener-

ation? How do we integrate the possibility of familial and tribal continu-
ity and loyalty with individual differences and rebellion?
This same issue of identification appears in any creative situation in
which there is a mentoring relationship. How does one move beyond
ones teacher, mentor, trainer and develop ones own style, or to use our
vocabulary to make a name for oneself independently of ones guide?
In an attempt to encourage originality and inventiveness, Francis
Jean Marcel Poulenc, the twentieth-century French composer, advised
his students to spit on your parents and teachers. He subsequently
added, parenthetically, before you worship them. This adage would
seem opposed to the more usual one of learning the tried and true
before experimenting on your own.
One direction to search for answers to the questions posed above is
to consider the examples of those who indeed have been successful in
their attempts to possess their name. Freud revolutionized our way of
thinking, making a name for himself in the history of Western thought.
The theoretical underpinnings of the Freudian revolution are thorough-
ly woven into the fabric of our thinking.
Freud shocked the world when he wrote about the Oedipal myth,
claiming that a little boy was enamored of his mother and wished to
eliminate his father; that all children had sexual strivings and desires,
impulses for which they could not be held accountable; and that sexual
fantasy was the underpinning of the libido, the energy driving the id,
that cauldron of seething passion. He revolutionized our thinking with
his discovery of the unconscious, making man no longer master of his
own house. As one author writes, Freud descended into the basement
of his house, into the cellar of the psyche; and there he found the
irrational, demonic and the mythical secrets in the heart of reason. 6
Freud uncovered and exposed heretical desires at the origins of each
man and woman.
In the development of his theory, Freud wrote and rewrote, rejected
and accepted, demolished and restored, refuted and reaffirmed his ear-
lier writings. Like all brilliant scientific thinkers, he challenged even his
own ideas with his inquisitive mind.
But Freuds making a name for himself involved more than public
recognition and acknowledgment, more than the revolutionary produc-
tion of an entirely new field. For the founder of psychoanalysis, there
was also a symbolic renomination, a remaking of his own name. Freuds

was a long struggle of personal conflict and radicalisma lifetime pro-
cess that he worked out in his own self-analysis, in his letters to William
Fliess, his major interlocutor for many years, and in his own writings.
Born Solomon Sigmund, son of Jakob, Freud had his own personal
conflicts about both his Jewish identity and his relationship with his
father. According to Marthe Robert, in her From Oedipus to Moses:
Freuds Jewish Identity, Freuds ambivalence was the catalyst of the
origins of psychoanalysis and a central link to his writing on the Oedipal
complex.
Freuds ambivalence can perhaps be symbolized by a particular fam-
ily incident. For Freuds thirty-fifth birthday, in 1881, his father pre-
sented him with a leather-bound copy of the actual Bible from which
Sigmund had studied as a child. Inscribed in the front was a lengthy
dedication to his son, written in Hebrew and drafted in the style of a
melitzah, a form of writing that is made up of biblical fragments and
phrases and rabbinical commentary fitted together to create statements
other than those intended by the author. Here is the literal translation
by the historian and scholar of Jewish studies and culture, Yosef Hayim
Yerushalmi, in his book Freuds Moses:
Son who is dear to me, Shelomoh. In the seventh in the days of the
years of your life the Spirit of the Lord began to move you and spoke
within you: Go, read in my Book that I have written and there will
burst open for you the wellsprings of understanding, knowledge and
wisdom. Behold, it is the Book of Books, from which sages have
excavated and lawmakers learned knowledge and judgment. A vision
of the Almighty did you see; you heard and strove to do, and you
soared on the wings of the Spirit. Since then the book has been
stored like the fragments of the tablets in an ark with me. For the day
on which your years were filled to five and thirty I have put upon it a
cover of new skin and have called it: Spring up, O well, sing ye unto
it! And I have presented it to you as a memorial and as a reminder
of love from your father, who loves you with everlasting love. Jakob
Son of R. Shelomoh Freid [sic] In the capital city Vienna 29 Nisan
[5]651 6 May [1]891. 7
In the writing of this inscription, father Jakob makes a number of

allusions by transposing and inserting biblical quotations and references
178 CHA P TER 14
that only someone versed in Hebrew studies could appreciate. But

more significant is that Jakob, bound to his Jewish faith and tradition, is
admonishing his son Shelomoh to return to his ancestry and to recon-
cile with his Jewish roots.
As the father reminds him, Freud had studied Jewish texts as a child
but at some point had abandoned the Book of Books, while his father
retained it and kept it for safekeeping. Now in his prime, Jakob returns
the childhood copy of the Bible with a plea to his son, a dramatic call to
return to the originally shared values of his father and to the traditional
legacy of his lineagea memorial and a reminder of love, to which
Freud never adhered. Psychoanalysis was to be born over the next
number of years with the publication of Freuds first seminal work, The
Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900, a few years after his fathers death in
1896. We know that Freud continued his internal struggle with his
father in his writings on his dreams, his letters to Fliess, and the recur-
ring theme of the father-son bond in his theoretical works.
Shelomoh ended up developing a new science of the human mind,
and followed this quest with a burning passion to the end of his days.
The son of traditional Jewish parents, he insisted on breaking ground
and smashing preciously treasured tenets of thinking, ever risking the
scorn, the chastisement, and the prejudices of his professional and fam-
ily communities. For example, his work on Moses and Monotheism, in
which he claims that Moses was an Egyptian, led to charges of heresy
and slander, not only within his own sphere but also in the larger public.
And yet, in spite of himself, Freud placed tremendous significance on
the text of speech and of dreams in the formulation of his theories,
revealing a thread that, in spite of himself, linked him to his predeces-
sors. Towards the end of his life, Freud wrote in his Autobiographical
Study:
I was moved, rather, by a sort of curiosity, which was, however,

directed more towards human concerns than toward natural objects;
nor had I grasped the importance of observation as one of the best
means of gratifying it. My deep engrossment in the Bible story (al-
most as soon as I learned the art of reading) had, as I recognized
much later, an enduring effect upon the direction of my interest. 8
Perhaps Freud took his own words to heart: The hero is the man
who resists his fathers authority and overcomes it. Freud was able to
rid himself of his deep-rooted identifications and link with his familys
tradition, a first step in the symbolic rewriting of his name and his
personal history. But did this rewriting necessarily entail a break with
the chain of generations? Can we see in the writings of psychoanalysis
and the elaborations not only a rupture but a revolution around a criti-
cal axis?
Every discipline has its renegades and revisionists who are auda-
cious, speculative, willful, and controversial. The visions of these revolu-
tionaries challenge those around them to listen and take heed. In the
fields of knowledge with which I am most familiar, we might consider:
James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Georges Perec (liter-
ature); the Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle, along with Ludwig Witt-
genstein, Walter Benjamin, and Roland Barthes (philosophy); Claude
Lvi-Strauss (anthropology); John Cage, Luciano Berio, and Arvo Prt
(musical composition); Robert Lepage (theater); Karl Heinrich Marx
(social science and economics); Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brow-
nell Anthony, and Betty Friedan (womens studies); along with my per-
sonal mentors, Freud and Lacan.
***
Perhaps you think I am suggesting that we all become revolutionar-
ies and heretical thinkers. Or perhaps you feel a pressure to become an
unconventional leader in your own field. Let me dispel such thoughts.
As a mentor of mine once said, We strive for an ideal but we live in the
real world. While the people I cite are exemplary, it is not their lifes
work or oeuvre per se that is significant, but their courage to challenge
and confront inner constraints, which allowed them to move beyond
themselves. In this antagonism between tradition and revisionism, the
name becomes a metaphorical fulcrum.
I am reminded of a patient who had a dream in which she visualized
a huge open space with buffalo running wild, as in the scenes of a Clint
Eastwood western. In the foreground, she sees a group of horses cor-
ralled. As she begins to free-associate in response to the dream, she
says, You know, they were beyond the Pale, those buffalo, but not the
horses who were penned in.
I question this phrase beyond the Pale, and she continues, Within
the Pale, there are laws that have to be obeyed, but you have to be a
subject of the land, a citizen of the state, to belong. The cost for protec-
180 CHA P TER 14
tion is submission and subjection to these laws of the land. Outside the
Pale, there is a lawlessnessa recklessness and a wild freedom.
Her associations led her to insights about the sense of enclosure and
restraint she felt in being a good girl, complying with everyones de-
mands and wishes. Her desire: to be free, to live life wildly, to think
outside the box.
Yes, outside the Pale is unbridled energy that cannot be contained,
the freedom of choice and only the self-imposed laws of restraint. With
this freedom comes the fear of excess, of going too far, of losing ones
bearings. How do we trust that we can move towards the unknown, that
territory of freedom, liberated from the certainty of familiarity and safe-
ty? Is it possible to travel beyond the protection and certainty, the safety
and security of a known master? To wander farther afield into unknown
territory for the sake of a wager? Is there the chance to emerge from
the depths like a defiant Prometheus unbound?
The story of the giving of the Tablets of Law is a biblical reference to
how the struggle for autonomy and independence from a significant
other is only won after a struggle with the law of the father and not
without consequences. The first Tablets of Law presented by Moses to
the people awaiting his return from Mount Sinai were two pieces of
stone. Fashioned by God and inscribed with the Ten Commandments,
they represented a covenant between law-giver and his people. Howev-
er, an impatient and insolent group of people awaited him on his return.
As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the [golden] calf and
the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his
hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He took the
calf that they had made and burned it; he ground it to powder and
strewed it upon the water and so made the Israelites drink it. (Exod.
32:1920)
With the first set of tablets smashed and broken, Moses appealed to
God and begged forgiveness on the behalf of his people. The Israelites
were spared but not fully pardoned at first. In a gesture of good faith,
God agreed to carve out another set of tablets, only this time it was to
be a joint human-divine effort. A second set of tablets (referred to as
the tablets of stone or the tablets of the covenant) inscribed with the
Decalogue was formed and once again presented to the Israelites. Cer-
tain considerations ensued: He does not remit all punishment, but
visits the iniquity of parents upon children and childrens children,

upon the third and fourth generations (Exod. 34:7).
Which makes sense. After all, are parents not responsible as role
models to ensure that their children are well taught and well informed?
However, can we interpret this story in another way? Is there a positive
spin to this cautionary tale? To establish our own autonomy and to
change the laws, to turn the world upside down, to damn the jailers and
censors, do we not need to counteract the prison guards and demons
that we carry around within us? Do we not need to create an upheaval
and break with the status quo? To even go so far as to err and learn by
failure?
There is a price to be paid for a true renomination. Another biblical
reference that may be helpful in describing this process of symbolic
renomination, a process that is necessarily linked to a struggle and/or
revolution, is the act of creation in Genesis, or, more specifically, the
Kabbalistic processes used to describe creation: tzimtzum (contraction),
shevirat ha-kelim (the shattering of the vessels), and tikkun (repair).
Tzimzum describes the first step in the process by which God with-
drew into his own essence, creating an area in which creation could
begin. Shevirat ha-kelim describes the process when God began to pour
his Light into the vessels (ha-kelim) that he had created in the empty
space left by his self-contraction. However, because these vessels were
not strong enough to hold the power of Gods Light, they shattered
(shevirat) randomly. The third step, tikkun, is the process of gathering
and raising the sparks of Gods Light that were carried down with the
shards of the vessels.
In a like manner, renaming (or reappropriating our name) involves
deformation or splitting from formation/nomination and a (re)creation/
(re)nomination. For the name to be read or received otherwise than it
was given at birththat is, to make it ones own (to make a name for
oneself)there must be a cut or a temporary rupture, a breaking of
the vessels. It is only through this dramatic renewal that the appropria-
tion of ones name can become a movement from the other to the self.
Emptied or released from the heaviness of its initial identifications and
released from its referential bondage, the name can become as neutral
as a common noun.
***
182 CHA P TER 14
My granddaughter Ashley and I are walking hand in hand on a beach

by Puerto Viejo, a small laid-back town on the Atlantic coast of Costa
Rica. She is a thoughtful young woman who radiates an openness to-
wards life. She is explaining some principles of Waldorf teaching, which
she has been studying and practicing, an alternative educational prac-
tice based on a humanistic philosophy developed by the Austrian phi-
losopher Rudolph Steiner. You know, she says, children in the Wal-
dorf system are introduced to the letters of the alphabet and even the
basics of language arts through creative play and self-expression. Rather
than the formal methods of the regular school system, we believe that
the basics of reading and writing should also flow from an integration of
body, soul, and spirit.
I look at her quizzically.
Let me give you an example, Grandma. Every letter of the alphabet
can be associated with a different movement and gesture, like this. She
flings her arms outwards with an unself-conscious freedom that person-
ifies her open spirit for me. See, this is an A. A for Ashley. And so each
child learns the spelling of his name through these various physical
movements. Its what we call eurythmy, Grandma; we call it learning to
dance your name. Eurythmy, from the Greek root meaning beautiful
or harmonious rhythm, a term used by Greek and Roman architects
to refer to the harmonious proportions of designs. I am reminded of the
tradition of Orthodox Jews who introduce their children to Torah
through a pairing of honey and letters or words. It is hoped that, by
placing a drop of honey on their tongue or hand after pronouncing a
word, they will associate the sweet taste of honey with the sweetness of
learning.
If we fully own that house of letters we call our name and into which
we are born, then it becomes a home, a place of comfort and solace. We
can choose to embrace it or leave it, replace it or modify it, accept it
with resolution or reject it with silent rancor. In time, we may come to
create a name for ourselves that is unencumbered of negative associa-
tions, identification, and/or a burdensome past.
Each of us is split between duty and desirea duty to fulfill certain
obligations and live up to our name and a desire to maintain our own
individuality. Inevitably we will encounter times when we are bound to
break and destroy the laws enforced by our fathers and mothers, either
surreptitiously or openly. And for this, we carry the burden of guilt
imposed by our ancestry, by an implicit contract with the law of our

fathers. Yet in the best of outcomes, we learn to dance our name not
only at the beginning of our life, but a second time when we have truly
appropriated it for ourselves.
APPENDIX: THE LANGUAGE OF NAMES
Onomastics, the study of proper names and their origins, includes

anthroponymy, [which is] concerned with human names, including
personal names, surnames and nicknames. . . . The study of proper
names . . . has a wide-ranging scope encompassing all names, all
languages, all geographical and cultural regions. 1
When I was four years old, my sister began attending kindergarten. In

my preschoolers mind, I imagined that my sister was spending her
mornings in a classroom constructed of booksbooks piled up high to
the ceiling, chairs and desks made out of books glued together, multi-
colored stacks of books, their spines all facing outwards like the ones in
overstuffed used bookstores I now love to frequent. I no longer remem-
ber where in my active imagination I placed the toys my sister men-
tioned to my parents, the areas of sand play and water play, the building
blocks and crayons. For it was this literary mansion that so captivated
my attention. My fascination led to incessant questions about my own
attendance at this wonderful place in anticipation of the time I too
would be big enough to attend the learning place of words and books.
When I pursued my graduate studies in psychology, I gravitated to
the field of language acquisition, that complicated process we all seem
to master so effortlessly. I became fascinated by the facility we all have
to acquire our mother tongue. So for my doctoral dissertation, I chose
to investigate one aspect of this complex process, the verbal patterns of
communication between mothers and their children. By videotaping
mother-infant pairs at three different periods within a year span, I ex-
185
186 A P P ENDIX
plored the language strategies mothers automatically use to engage

their children.
The acquisition of language is truly a baffling process. As language-
learning beings, we take the complexities of this astonishing feat for
granted. It is only when there is a breakdown in the process (such as
aphasia) that we marvel at how each of us accomplishes this develop-
mental milestone. Some of us repeat this process and become language
learners again as adults, taking on the task of acquiring a second or third
language. Not only must we learn the new phonological sounds and
semantics of words, but we must also master syntactical and grammati-
cal structures, those rules that permit certain word groupings to form
sentences. Initially, when we listen to a new language, strings of foreign
sounds become parsed into smaller units until we gradually begin to
recognize, decode, and understand them. Conversely, as we begin to
speak, we must put together those phonemes and morphemes into the
construction of meaningful units of words, phrases, and eventually sen-
tences.
The capacity for speech and language is the gift of our humanity, a
capacity that our kindred mammals do not share. Man holds an excep-
tional and inimitable status in the world of living beings. Like his animal
cousins, man is that individual of appetites, of instincts, and of cravings
for food, for sex, and for satisfaction of his needs. Man desires a full
belly and a bellyful of laughs, a wet mouth and a mouthful of pleasure, a
sexy partner and a partner for sex. Yet what distinguishes man from his
animal predecessors is his capacity for generative speech and language
(and here I am not speaking about communication). Mans faculty to
generate thoughts and to create endless streams of words in infinitesi-
mal combinations is the unique talent of speaking beingsHomo sapi-
ens.
Homo sapiens is symbolic man: the orator, the spokesperson, the
scribe, the literary negotiator, the storyteller. Like my imaginary child-
hood image, speech and language constitute a symbolic house in which
man resides, a house of words developed, constructed, and transmitted
by an extraordinary history of civilization. This symbolic reality incorpo-
rates all of the activities that flow from a wellspring of letters, numbers,
and symbols.
What is it that allows man to speak and generate language? Words
and their constituent parts are dependent on the physical apparatus of
T H E LAN G U AGE OF N AM ES 187
our mouth and jaw to be conveyed. Until letters are spoken or voiced,
they remain the carriers of pure non-sense, curly waves or straight stick-
men littered on a sheet of paper. And it is only when consonants are
combined with vowels, allowing the flow of air through the vocal tract,
that these letters grouped together and lined up side by side like a
brigade of marching soldiers can be spoken in any meaningful way. It is
the breath occurring through vocalization that parses and interrupts the
murmuring flow of sound, thereby creating units of meaning.
We breathe life into these dead consonantsthe gutturals, labials,
and fricativesto make them sing and dance for us, to create meaning
and to inhabit our world through language. In specific combinations,
these groupings open into a universe of sense. From a change in one
letter of a word, there is before us a world of difference. Words bring
division, order, conflict, the creation of life and the creation of death.
Opposites and similarities, homonyms, antonyms, and synonyms. We
enter the theater of life through these letters, words, and thoughts. As
the Arabic poet Mahmoud Darwish writes so beautifully in his memoir
In the Presence of Absence, describing the power of this house of letters
and words:
Letters lie before you, so release them from their neutrality and play
with them like a conqueror in a delirious inverse. Letters are restless,
hungry for an image, and the image is thirsty for a meaning. Letters
are empty clay so fill them with the sleeplessness of that first con-
quest. Letters are a mute appeal in pebbles scattered on the open
path of meaning. Rub one letter against another and a star is born.
Bring a letter close to another and you can hear the sound of rain.
Place one letter on top of another and you will find your name drawn
like a ladder with only a few rungs. 2
Before I continue, let me introduce a few terms. Nomenclature is

the term that applies to either a list of names and/or terms, or to the
system of principles, procedures, and terms related to naming. Nomina-
tion is the assigning of a word or phrase to a particular object or proper-
ty and derives from the Latin nomen (name) and calere (to call).
The act of naming is a human attempt to inhabit the illimitable
vastness of existence with its mysteries, to capture a degree of order and
control over the wildness and unpredictability of life. We name things
in an attempt to hold on(to) or pin down our attachment to complex
188 A P P ENDIX
ideas or concepts that elude our grasp, requiring a harness of some

magnitude. And with the straps in place, we can transmit these ideas
and concepts to others with a shared vocabulary. It was not until we
named a cluster of stars that we could see the constellations of Orion,
Taurus, and the Big Dipper.
Words simplify and categorize our reality; common nouns or names
label all those forms, shapes, objects, and people that constitute our
personal and collective universes. The act of naming solidifies our real-
ity, bringing order to chaos. Tree is the word we give to the concept of
tree, therefore we can recognize and learn something about a tree. By
naming we separate and identify elements of our world. Apple is a fruit
that grows on a tree; it is separate from a pear that is another fruit that
also grows on a tree.
In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (the
sequel to Alices Adventures in Wonderland), Alice innocently ponders
the question of names. In her charmingly naive fashion, she points out
the impossibility of a world without names:
This must be the wood, she said thoughtfully to herself, where

things have no names. I wonder whatll become of my name when I
go in? I shouldnt like to lose it allbecause theyd have to give me
another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then
the fun would be, trying to find the creature that had got my old
name! Thats just like the advertisements, you know, when people
lose dogsanswers to name of Dash: had on brass collarjust
fancy calling everything you met Alice, till one of them answered!
Only they wouldnt answer at all if they were wise.
She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it
looked very cool and shady. Well, at any rate, its a great comfort,
she said as she stepped under the trees, after being so hot, to get
into theinto what? she went on rather surprised as to being un-
able to think of the word. I mean to get under theunder the
under this, you know! putting her hand on the trunk of the tree.
What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe its got no name
why to be sure it hasnt! 3
Alice quickly realizes that she no longer knows who or how she is. It
is only when a fawn comes along and encourages her to move into
another field that the situation is cleared up. The fawn gives a sudden
bound into the air, shakes itself free from Alice, and cries out in delight,
Im a Fawn! and dear me! youre a human child! It is following this

outcry that Alice remembers her own name in relief.
In todays society, we can appreciate how much we are dependent
on common names to label, classify, and share our collective world
when we consider the expanding universe of social media: tweet, web,
spam, blogger, etc. In the midst of either radical or progressive change,
we are forced to adapt to our new reality by creating new terms and
names to reflect the ever-evolving world of industry, technology, and
science. We also appropriate old words and create new usages for them.
We borrow and extend the meaning of words, stretching the canon of
language like an elastic band. For example, the English language is
infused with the word name . . .
We put a name to when we report an event or creation; we call
someone names when we are displeased or annoyed or when we want to
insult an opponent or rival (Plain Jane); we give our name to a discov-
ered disease (Lou Gehrigs), a new construction (Trump Tower), or a
cutting-edge creation (the Frank Gehry museum). And by the name of,
we call or label a person, a pet, or a favored treasure.
We say that something has ones name on it when we want to suggest
that something is so aptly suited to a person or to imply that someone is
destined to receive something. We have in ones name when we hold or
contain something in our possession. We own, register, complete, or
devise an activity or event in all but name when we feel something exists
in a particular state minus the formal requirements. In someones name,
we bequeath money, donations, or gifts as a way of granting something
on behalf of someone; in the name of, we perform an act using the name
of a specified person or organization. And in name only, we describe
something that does not actually happen in reality.
If we are lucky and exceptional in our life projects, we may make a
name for ourself; we acquire public recognition and acknowledge-
mentby peers, by a professional community, and/or by the public at
large. For some, to be a name to contend with is a challenge of public
success and fame.
Common measures of status, fame, and fortune in our Western
world are often associated with namingsto be named in a certain
magazine or newspaper; to be considered or referred to as a big name in
theater or film, the sciences, or the arts; to have to ones name a certain
credit or cachet is to have in ones possession something to be desired.
190 A P P ENDIX
There are those with endowments who have a building, a museum, or a

foundation in ones name. And if you are lucky enough to have your
success and fame acknowledged, you might give your name to a new
discovery or organization, thereby transforming your name from a prop-
er noun into an adjective, such as the Picasso museum, a Kafkaesque
film, the Epstein-Barr virus, or the Hubble telescope. Some names
have worked their way into the vernacular of everyday speech: Geez
Louise, Even Steven, Dapper Dan, Dont know from Adam, For Petes
Sake, Plain Jane, Handy Andy.
I have read somewhere that there are three levels of fame. The first
is when you go somewhere and someone recognizes you; the second is
when you go somewhere and everyone recognizes you; and the third is
when you go somewhere and someone recognizes you but cant believe
it is you in the flesh. Is that really Penelope Cruz? I cant believe it is
really her! In todays culture, to make a name is what is encouraged in
every field of endeavor. I turn on the radio and I hear that Justin
Trudeau, the son of one of Canadas former prime ministers who was
well-loved and revered by many, brings his name to the table, that
Stevie Wonder now has his name in lights, and that Margaret Thatcher
is really a name to conjure with these days.
According to linguistic theory, common names can be placed on one
shelf in a cupboard of linguistic categories, while proper names slide
underneath as a subcategory. While both common and proper names
are used for identification, the further subset of proper names holds a
particular position within the category of nouns.
Curiously, the proper name has always been a troubling paradox for
linguists and philosophers of language, psychoanalysts, and anthropolo-
gists alike. We can join this debate by asking: What differentiates the
proper name from the common name or noun? What exactly is so
proper about the proper name? What is its proper use? Is the granting
of a proper name to an individual a matter of convention or is it an
attempt to capture a certain essential character or trait? What are the
rules and practices that underlie the formation of names? Are proper
names merely a more refined or particular means of classification? Is
there something immutable about the name?
Perhaps we can blame the Greeks for a certain confusion in this
regard. After all, as the French philosopher and ancient Greek historian
Jacques Brunschwig reminds us, it was the Stoics, those contrarian phi-
losophers, who, for reasons connected to their analysis of language,

created a new genus onoma (or name), which was then further divided
into two species: the idion onoma (or common name) as opposed to the
koinonion onoma (or proper name). And it was this split that would
engage academics and scholars in ongoing discussions over their differ-
ences. To complicate the picture, in the French language, with its roots
yoked to Latin, there is only one word, nom, that means both noun and
name, whereas in English we use the two terms. In English, we can still
refer to the man (the noun) and Socrates (the name), whereas in
French there is only one word (nom) to refer to both situations.
Given that it was the Greeks who were the major culprits of this
debate, let us turn our attention to that most argumentative and bril-
liant of philosopher-kings, Plato, who wrote the well-known dialogue
Cratylus on the topic of proper names. In fact, Platos own name, ac-
cording to the philosopher Diogenes Lartes, was Aristocles after his
grandfather, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him
Platon, meaning broad, on account of his robust figure. According to
other sources dating from the Alexandrian period, Plato derived his
name from the breadth (platyts) of his eloquence or from the width
(platys) of his forehead.
Now, imagine living in Athens in 360 BCE. In the ancient agora, the
town square, we are standing in front of the Stoa of Zeus, the temple-
like structure commemorating the victory of the Greeks over the Per-
sians. We admire the magnificent Doric external columns and the Ionic
inner ones as we approach the bronzed statue of Zeus Eleutherios, the
liberator, with his outstretched arms. The heat is assaulting and so we
decide to sit down on the steps of the stoa in the shade.
Three men appear in view. As they saunter over, we recognize the
man with a mane of white hair and recessed eyes as Socrates. He is
accompanied by two other men: One is short and appears slovenly; the
other, distinguished by his height and his demeanor, is clutching a sheaf
of papers. The latter is Cratylus, a Greek philosopher mentored by the
renowned Heraclitus of Asia Minor, whose teachings on the constant
flux and motion of life were well regarded at the time. A self-assured
man, pompous and erudite, and a master of discourse, Cratylus stares
down at his intellectual opponent with contempt. His opponent is none
other than Hermogenes, the son of Hipponicus and brother of the
wealthy Callias. Hermogenes, a man of little talent, learning, or proper-
192 A P P ENDIX
ty, bearing a name of grandeur yet ignorant of the basic tenets of philos-
ophy, is nevertheless an inquisitive subject, a seeker of truth, and an
investigative soul.
The two men sit down a few meters from us and within minutes
begin speaking in high-pitched tones so that we can overhear their
words. They seem to be engaged in a passionate debate within the
presence of the ever moderate and wise man of learning, Socrates. The
topic under dispute: the truth or correctness of names. It appears that
for Cratylus, names are appropriate to their objects insofar as they
describe them. For example, the Greek word for man, anthrpos,
breaks down into anathrn ha oppe, one who reflects on what he has
seen, a fitting description for a species in unique possession of what
the Greeks considered both eyesight and intelligence. According to
Cratylus, this name reflects the distinguishing characteristics of man
and so is an apt description that fits the referent.
This approach, termed linguistic naturalism and embodied in Craty-
luss thinking, is pitted against the linguistic conventionalism of Hermo-
genes, who we overhear saying:
I cannot convince myself that there is any principle of correctness in

names other than convention and agreement; any name you give, in
my opinion, is the right one, and if you change that and give another,
the new name is as correct as the oldwe frequently change the
names of our slaves, and the newly-imposed name is as good as the
old: for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is conven-
tion and habit of the users;such is my view. 4
It is not surprising that Hermogenes would argue against a naturalist

position. After all, what could possibly be natural, or even proper, about
his name Hermogenes, which means offspring of the god Hermes,
which implies of the same kind as Hermes? How could such a simple
man carry the name of such a resourceful and verbally adept god, a
contriver of tales and speeches, and a messenger of the gods?
I am no true son of Hermes for I am no good at speeches, he
moans. This cannot be. My name can only be a product of random
conventionality. For Hermogenes, it is merely a convention that cer-
tain phonemes are assigned to certain referents, and it would be equally
valid and acceptable to switch the names for man and cow if a
community so decided.
In the ensuing dialogue, Socrates logically dissects the issues in de-

tail. Ever the devils advocate, he first seduces Hermogenes into believ-
ing that he is in agreement with a naturalist position by providing exten-
sive etymological evidence and insight into historical linguistics. With a
torrential outpouring of examples of the names of mortals and gods, he
seduces his listeners into a belief in the embedded meanings of names.
There is Orestes, the man of the mountains, who is described as having
the brutality, fierceness, and mountain wildness suggested by his name.
There is Agamemnon, admirable for remaining steadfast, who is de-
scribed as patient and persevering in the accomplishment of his resolu-
tions. There is the mighty Zeus, whose name Socrates mentions is di-
vided into zena and dia, both signifying the nature of God. And there is
Tantalus, or Tantalos, the most weighted down by misfortune, whose
life was full of ill-luck and whose death includes the weight of a stone
suspended (talanteia) over his head.
However, in spite of his lengthy catalogue of examples, Socrates
eventually concedes that names of men, unlike those of the gods and
heroes, are deceptive because they do not necessarily reflect the shared
characteristics of those lofty ancestors but merely reveal mortal parental
desires and wishes. Speaking as somewhat of a linguist, he concludes
that names may be correct and even significant but that they necessarily
and inevitably become twisted in all manner of ways. By making prop-
er names independent of their inaugural moment and acknowledging
their modifications over time, Socrates undermines and ousts the posi-
tions of both Cratylus and Hermogenes.
Today, it is easy to identify names that might fall into either catego-
ry: those that are ordinary and appear to have no semantic meaning
versus those that appear to be more appropriate and semantically
meaningful. As examples, we might say that Faith, Dahlia, and Pru-
dence are Cratylic names, whereas Susan, Timothy, and Kevin are not.
However, this simplistic division does not account for all those names
whose derivation or etymological reference tie them to meanings of
Greek, Latin, or Hebrew origins, or those names infused with particular
significance.
In fact, as Socrates points out, perhaps it is more accurate to say that
over time and in certain places, names grow in associations, both posi-
tive and negative. Certain names become popular and acquire the stat-
us of popular icons, whereas other names become corrupt and tempo-
194 A P P ENDIX
rarily removed from social circulation. The original meaning of such

German-sounding names as Adolph or Heinrich in the postwar West-
ern world may have been Hermogenean at one time, but today carry a
particularly negative connotation. The historical entanglement of names
and the complex circumstances in which they can become charged with
meaning and signification prevent any clear-cut divide between these
two categories.
The history of words and its incorporation into everyday discourse
shows us how certain common names become branded. When a new
scientific discovery emerged triumphant, it was with a proper name that
it was awarded and rewarded: the Franklin stove, the Geiger counter,
the Gallop poll, the Morse code, the Newtonian telescope, and in the
field of psychology, the Rorschach test. Many common nouns have
become so well integrated in our everyday vocabulary, we have forgot-
ten that the original source was a named individual: bloomers after
Amelia Bloomer, cardigan after James Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan,
jacuzzi after Candido Jacuzzi.
I was surprised to learn that many food items that are part of our
regular diet have been named after peoples preferences or idiosyncra-
sies: Baco noir, a hybrid grape, named after its breeder, Maurice Baco,
coined to flatter the matre dhtel to Louis XIV, Louis de Bechamel,
Marquis de Nointel (16301703), who happened to also be a financier
and ambassador; Caesar salad, named after Caesar Cardini (18961956)
or one of his associates who created this salad at the restaurant of the
Hotel Caesar in Tijuana; pavlova (light as Pavlova), a meringue and
fruit dessert named after Anna Pavlova (18811931), the Russian balle-
rina; and Oh Henry!, the candy bar introduced by the Williamson Can-
dy Company in Chicago in 1920, named for a young man who frequent-
ed the company store and was often commandeered to do odd jobs with
that call of his name.
Let us look at another place in which proper names are given consid-
erable attention. Just as new parents must decide on a name for their
newborn, so are authors faced with the process of nomination in giving
birth to their characters and introducing them to the public. They take
tremendous care to ensure that just the proper name is chosen to
reflect the disposition and temperament of the men and women who
will inhabit their pages. In the introduction of his insightful book Liter-
ary Names: Personal Names in English Literature, the author Alastair
Fowler highlights the notion that not all literary names can be easily
categorized into one group or another (i.e., Cratylic or Hermogenean),
citing the delightful dialogue between Humpty-Dumpty and Alice as an
example:
When Humpty-Dumpty demands what Alices name means, she

wonders must a name mean something? Of course it must, says
Humpty positively: my name means the shape I amand a good
handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any
shape, almostly. 5
Fowler points out that Humpty-Dumpty was then still descriptive

of a short, dumpy, hump-shouldered person, and that Alice would
assume that he was an egg, based on her familiarity with nursery
rhymes. He believes that Lewis Carrollthat is, C. L. Dodgson, the
mathematical logician (two names for two distinct identities)knew
that names could not easily be categorized as meaningful or meaning-
less, so that Alice and Humpty-Dumpty each had their own histo-
ries and meant different things at different times.
The choice of names for literary characters is an excellent example of
the way names are not only denotative, designating a particular person,
but also connotative, conjuring up rich associations. The creation of
names is never random or indiscriminate, but systematic and built on
current social values and implicit associations. Many authors choose
names that carry specific meanings in order to strengthen a theme or
underline a personality trait. For example, some names might reflect
allusions to particular characteristics, such as the hypocritical Silver in
Treasure Island that may shine brightly but is not true silver.
It is obvious to most readers that by the end of a well-written book,
one feels that the character fits the name and vice versa. In the case of
the classics, we associate certain personality traits with legendary char-
acters: the mysterious, brooding, and romantic Mr. Rochester born by
the pen of Charlotte Bront; Josef K., the universal and timeless Every-
man of Franz Kafka; the deductive reasoning powers of Sherlock
Holmes; or the funny, feisty, and passionate Anne of Green Gables.
I cannot resist sharing with you the impact of what the master crafts-
man and literary genius James Joyce has managed to convey by his
inventive list of names that are fanciful, evocative, and overdetermined.
Combining satire and burlesque with associations and classical refer-
196 A P P ENDIX
ences, we are immediately struck by the following wedding list of guests

in Ulysses, so astutely noted in Fowlers book:
Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs. Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs. Poll Ash,

Mrs. Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake,
Mrs. Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs. Rown Greene, Mrs. Helen Vonegad-
ding, Mrs. Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth,
Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs. Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss
Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar,
Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and
Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Miss Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss
May Hawthrone, Mrs. Gloriana Palme, Mrs. Liana Forrest, Mrs.
Arabella Blackwood and Mrs. Norman Holyoake of Oklahoma Regis
graced the ceremony by their presence. 6
Conversely, as Fowler points out, we also appropriate the character-

istics of literary characters into our personal stock of shorthand. Per-
haps no greater a writer than Shakespeare has instilled into our vocabu-
lary a number of dramatic creations that have become emblematic and
stereotypical of certain qualities: the ambitious and greedy Macbeth,
the doubting Hamlet, Shylock the penurious Jew, and Sir John Falstaff,
the fat knight of great wit . . . spectacular resilience; fierce subversive
intelligence . . . carnivalesque exuberance. The assumptions we make,
both true and false, about names in literature also remind me of the
preconceived notions we make about people in our everyday lives based
on our associations to their names. I was reminded of this when I
recently met a friend of my mothers named Annette.
Annette Joanne Funicello, I said innocently, thats the only other
Annette I ever knew.
With a disparaging look, she said, Oh, no. Please, not her. For me,
this actress who played the most cherished of the Mouseketeers in the
Mickey Mouse Club had been an icon of energy, laughter, and life.
Little did I know that she had also battled multiple sclerosis for over
fifteen years and had died a few months before this encounter.
In the same way that we conjure up a world of associations and
memories when we hear the scratchy voice of Bob Dylan crooning,
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed, or The Beatles earnestly
singing I wanna hold your hand, so too do names retrieve a world of
sensual memories laced with the sights, smells, and sounds of times
past. With certain names, not only do we re-create the past, but we
imbue them with personalities and imaginary projections, placing them
in an unwritten syllabus of metaphors, making them proper to the
people who carry them.
In spite of Socrates conclusion, and the rich associations that are
now fixed to certain names, we have still not addressed the question of
what is unique and particular about the proper name. Today, the debate
is less about how a name has been assigned, but rather the distinctive
characteristics of the proper name. In other words, what distinguishes
the proper name from the common name?
If we shift from the fallout from Platos seminal text and the elo-
quence of Socrates arguments and fast-forward to the contemporary
world, we can see that Western philosophers of language and logicians
line up under the banner of one of two camps regarding theories of the
proper name. The first is the descriptivist theory, notably heralded by
such philosophers as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgen-
stein, and John Searle; and the second is the causal theory of reference,
championed predominantly by the preeminent American philosopher
and logician of the twentieth century, Saul Kripke.
Those who argue for a descriptivist position claim that the meanings
of proper names are identical to the descriptions associated with them
by their speakers. The name Socrates refers to the man who was a
Greek philosopher, the man who lived from 469 to 399 BCE, the pro-
tagonist of Platos dialogues, and the man who was executed for heret-
ical ideas. This theory takes the meaning of the name Socrates to be a
collection of descriptions and takes the referent of the name to be the
thing that satisfies all or most of these descriptions or cluster of proper-
ties. Bertrand Russell, whose theory would also be termed descriptivist,
claimed that the proper name is a term that designates something par-
ticular. This particular designation is what distinguishes the proper
name from the abbreviated description of a common noun. The proper
name is a word for the particular; there can only be one Socrates, and
he is designated by that name.
By contrast, causal theory states that a names referent becomes
fixed by an original act of naming or a dubbing. When this happens,
the name becomes attached to the person or thing in a permanent way
as a rigid designator of that object. Irrespective of the later uses of the
name, it will always remain linked to the original, in spite of any coinci-
198 A P P ENDIX
dental etymological connections. In other words, any proper name,

even those that appear to refer to an obvious referent as a linguistic
naturalist like Cratylus would suggest, has been transmitted through an
indefinitely long series of earlier uses that can be traced back to an
original or baptismal naming.
Let me illustrate with an example. The fact that a proper name is a
rigid designator as opposed to a bundle of descriptors means that a
proper name refers to the object in every country in which the object
exists, while most descriptions designate different objects in different
languages. This means that Marilyn Monroe refers to the same person
in every possible world in which Monroe exists, while the blond actress
and sex icon of the 1950s who emblazoned movie screens around the
world could also refer to Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, or Brigitte
Bardot.
Both these positions fall apart if we consider the function of the
proper name in everyday conversation. We tend to think of common
names (nouns) as referring to multiple objects. While we may not nec-
essarily have in mind the same table when we label an object by the
word table, we all agree that there can be many tables of different
shapes, sizes, and colors. By contrast, when we refer to Albert Schweit-
zer, we are designating the one and only, the unique medical missionary
who went to Africa to practice medicine. If we say that the proper name
is singular, unambiguous, and denotes only one individual, then what
can we say about the several Allan Browns, Abdul Mahmouds, or Sung
Lees that all share the same name yet refer to several different people?
In a similar way, let us consider the argument that a common noun
always refers to a class or an all, so that all men named John is a
general form, whereas John Smith is unambiguous and refers to the
man whose proper name is John Smith. Yet even in this case, there are
multiple John Smiths that would be difficult to distinguish on the basis
of the full proper name alone. Secondly, it is argued that the proper
name is a linguistic unit that can only function as a subset of nouns and
can never be used in different grammatical forms, such as adverbs or
adjectives. Yet today there are names such as And, Or, and the musical
group The Who. And we certainly and with regular frequency turn
proper names into adjectives and common nouns: Kafkaesque, Victo-
rian, Copernican, Darwinian. In my field of psychoanalysis alone, we
refer to theories that are Freudian, Lacanian, Kleinian, Jungian, Bion-

ian, or Kohutian, to name a few.
A third argument is that we refer to a common name when we want
to imply that we all share the same meaning of its word usage. For
example, a telephone is an instrument of communication that transmits
sounds across a wire, and we all conform to this shared understanding
of its meaning. Similarly, a common noun is usually considered to be a
word that has a semantic connotation, or means something, such as a
dog or a cat. As noted above, we refer to a proper name when we imply
an exclusivity of reference that does not contain any meaning. But
how then do we explain such proper names as Joy, Grace, and Rose or
Goldman and Singer, whose spelling without capital letters constitute a
basic part of our everyday lexicon of nouns? A stronger counterargu-
ment is the class of those names that have entered our vocabulary
because of their universal associations, such as a Shylock or a Dr. Jekyll,
or a Machiavellian principle.
Working in a different field of study, Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner,
an Oxford philologist and Egyptologist, eventually developed an alter-
native theory about common and proper names that overcame some of
these noted problems. While developing a method for documenting
and cataloguing hieroglyphs, those primitively drawn symbols, he began
jotting down his ideas in his scribbler and eventually wrote a little-
known but controversial book on the theory of names. As an alternative
to the two theories mentioned above, Gardiner argued that proper
names are to be distinguished by their particular sound, or sonant dis-
tinctiveness. While acknowledging that some proper names do have
meaning, his focus was on the significance of the characteristic sound
qualities that give names a unique meaning of their own. From this, we
can infer that my name is Mavis Himes and will be understood and
translated and pronounced in all languages as Mavis Himes, even if it is
spelled as Heims, Hymes, Chaims, or Heimz. As such, it will always be
identified by the unique sound with which it is uttered.
This notion goes along with the considerable shock and dismay that
one feels when trying to translate the proper name of a character from
one language to another by a literal translation of meaning: e.g., Louis
Brasfort for Louis Armstrong; Oliver Pierre for Oliver Stone; or Sig-
mund Joy or Sigmund Pleasure for Sigmund Freud(e). It is clear that we
can definitely say that all names are characterized by their sound qual-
200 A P P ENDIX
ity. This immunity and immutability from literal translation as a key

feature of the proper name makes its articulation sacred and permanent
for its bearer.
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: Most full proper names of well-known people in this book have
been retrieved from the Internet. Some have been obtained from re-
source materials. Most etymological definitions have been retrieved
from the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology or from the website
Online Etymology Dictionary.
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NOTES
1. AN INVITATION INTO BEING
1. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1994 [1958 in French]), 45.
2. Edmond Jabs, The Book of Resemblances, vol. 2, Intimations of the
Desert, trans. Rosemarie Waldrop (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press,
1978), 21.
3. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Ennis Rees (New York: Modern Library,
1960), 119.
2. NAMES WITH POWER
1. Irving Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 7.

2. Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009),
181.
3. Jacob Neusner, The Phenomenon of the Rabbi in Late Antiquity,
Numen 16, 1969: 120, as referenced in Stuart Weinberg Gershon, Kol Nidrei:
Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson,
1994), 53.
207
208 NOTES
3. GO OUT AND NAME
1. David Meghnagi, Freud and Judaism (London: Karnac Books, 1993),

64.
2. Boris Feldblyum, Understanding Russian-Jewish Given Names, Avo-
taynu 13 (2), 1997: 3.
3. Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: Social and Cultural History of
Personal Naming in Western Europe (London: University College Press,
1998), 245.
4. Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 7.
4. NAMES AND NOMADS
1. Charles Raddock, Portrait of a People, vol. 1 (New York: Judaica Press,

1965), 7.
2. Jeremy Leigh, Jewish Journeys (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), 78.
5. CHOOSING NAMES
1. Naming Rights, Globe and Mail editorial, January 4, 2013.

2. Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Daud ibn Auda [David B. Appleton], Peri-
odic Arab Names and Naming Practices, 2003, http://heraldry.sca.org/names/
arabic-naming2.htm.
3. ibn Auda, Periodic Arab Names and Naming Practices.
4. Peter Oliva, The City of Yes (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1999),
186.
6. CELEBRATING NAMES
1. Yuri Rytkheu, The Chukchi Bible, trans. I. Y. Chavasse (Brooklyn: Ar-

chipelago Books, 2011), 134.
2. Ibid., 361.
3. Rau: the sun, the lord. Wa: a child, birth, the existent.
4. Ma: the mother, mouth, cavity, water, nature.
5. Ba: the father, spirit, nonexistent.
N OT E S 209
6. Ibrahim al-Koni, Anubis: A Desert Novel (Cairo: University of Cairo

Press, 2007), 67.
7. THE STRANGE FATE OF NAMES
1. Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays, The Language of Names (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1997), 104.
2. Karl Abraham, On the Determining Power of Names, in Clinical
Papers and Essays on Psychoanalysis, trans. H. C. Abraham and D. R. Ellison
(London: Hogarth Press, 1955 [1911]), 31.
3. Catherine Millet, Dal and Me, trans. Trista Selous (Zurich: Scheidegger
& Spiess, 2008), 166.
4. Ibid.
5. Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, War-
wick Studies in European Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000), 19.
8. TRANSMISSION AND INHERITANCE
1. C. J. Tyerman, Flags and Stories, review of To Follow in Their Foot-

steps, by Nicholas Paul, The Times Literary Supplement, June 14, 2013.
2. Ibid.
3. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare (London: Pimlico / Random House, 2005 [2004]), 358.
4. Ibid., 79.
5. Emily Landau, The Amazing Adventures of Michael Snow: An Uncen-
sored History of Torontos Most Notorious Art Star, Toronto Life, March 27,
2013, http://torontolife.com/city/the-amazing-adventures-of-michael-snow.
6. Ta Obreht, The Tigers Wife (New York: Random House, 2011), 283.
10. THE FAMILY TREE OF LIFE
1. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia (London: Continuum [1987] 2003), 18.
2. Cynthia Rimsky, Poste Restante (Madrid: Ediciones Lastarria, 2011), as
quoted in Penny Siganou, Like a Tourist in Exile: Imagery, the Ephemeral
and Returning in Cynthia Rimskys Poste Restante (unpublished graduate stu-
dent paper).
210 NOTES
3. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 25.

4. King George letters patent, as published in the London Gazette on
December 14, 1917, http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/
prince_highness_docs.htm#1917_2.
5. Queen Elizabeth II letters patent, as published in the London Gazette
on August 30, 1996, http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/
prince_highness_docs.htm#1996.
6. Harry Ostrer, Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 21819.
11. IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
1. Potlatch Ban: Abolishment of First Nations Ceremonies, Working Ef-

fectively with Aboriginal Peoples Blog, October 16, 2012, http://www.ictinc.ca/
the-potlatch-ban-abolishment-of-first-nations-ceremonies.
2. Max Mller, as quoted in Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol.
13 (London: Hogarth Press, 1960 [1913]), 110.
12. VOLUNTARY NAME-CHANGING
1. Jane Siberry, Wikipedia, last modified September 11, 2015, https://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Siberry.
2. Matt Soniak, How 8 Famous Writers Chose their Pen Names, Mental
Floss, June 14, 2014, http://mentalfloss.com/article/51195/how-8-famous-writ-
ers-chose-their-pen-names.
3. Donna Rifkind, A Fictional Character, review of Joseph Anton: A Me-
moir, by Salman Rushdie, New York Times, October 12, 2012, Sunday Book
Review.
4. Fanny Mendelssohn, letter to her father, July 16, 1820, published in
Sebastian Hensel, The Mendelssohn Family (17291847), 4th rev. ed., 2 vols.
(London: Sampson Low, 1884), as quoted in Fanny Mendelssohn, Wikipe-
dia, last modified October 23, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan-
ny_Mendelssohn.
5. Megan Wood, When the New You Carries a Fresh Identity, Too, New
York Times, February 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/fashion/
much-in-common-but-in-name-only.html?_r=0.
6. Ibid.
N OT E S 211
13. INVOLUNTARY NAME-CHANGING
1. Efrat Neuman, In the Name of Zionism, Change Your Name, Haa-

retz, April 17, 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/.premium-
1.566809#.
2. Pierre Pachet, Autobiographie de mon pre (Paris: Editions Autrement,
1994), 121 (translation by author).
3. Ibid., 300.
4. Dow Marmur, Surprise, Youre Jewish, Toronto Star, September 16,
2012, http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/09/16/sur-
prise_youre_jewish.html.
5. Allan Hall, Hermann Goerings Great-Niece: I Had Myself Sterilised
So I Would Not Pass on the Blood of a Monster, Daily Mail, January 20,
2010, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244754/Hermann-Goerings-
great-niece-tells-Hitlers-Children-I-sterilised-I-pass-blood-monster.html.
14. A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
1. Goethe, Faust, part I, scene IV.

2. Richard Gwyn, The Contender: The Appeal of Justin Trudeaus Emo-
tional Intelligence, The Walrus, July/August 2013, 2630.
3. Magdalena Tulli, In Red, trans. Bill Johnston (Brooklyn: Archipelago
Books, 2011), 12.
4. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Folger Library Edition (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 7172.
5. John Allemang, An Intimate Epic, Globe and Mail, April 29, 2013.
6. Susan Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic
Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1982), 199.
7. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freuds Moses: Judaism Terminable and Inde-
terminable (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 71.
8. Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study, vol. 20 of The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Ho-
garth Press, 1960 [1925]), 8.
212 NOTES
APPENDIX: THE LANGUAGE OF NAMES
1. Nomenclature, Wikipedia, last modified October 27, 2015, https://en.

wikipedia .org/ wiki / Nomenclature.
2. Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence, trans. Sinan Antoon
(Brooklyn: Archipelago Books, 2011), 28.
3. Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the
Looking-Glass, 150th Anniversary Edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2015),
15253.
4. Plato, Cratylus, The Internet Classics Archive, http//clas-
sics.mit.edu.Plato/cratylus.html.
5. Alastair Fowler, Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature
(London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 2.
6. Ibid., 218.
INDEX
Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), 137 anti-Semitism, 107; as name-change

Abraham, 7, 31, 33, 37, 150; circumcision reason, 15, 1516, 132, 143, 152
covenant, 59; direct lineage from, Anton, Joseph, 133
2324, 25; name from birth Anubis: A Desert Novel (al-Koni), 69
circumstances, 2627; voluntary name- Apatchevsky, Simcha, 154
change of, 138139 Arabic-speaking people, rhythmic
Abraham, Karl, 75 composition of name for, 57
Abrahamsen, Karla, 144 Arouet, Franois-Marie (aka Voltaire),
acquisition, of language, 8, 185186 134
adoption, voluntary name-changing in, Ashkenazi Jews, 24; chaim added to given
127 name, 14; custom of name-changing of
Africa, 128; celebrating name traditions ill, 19; Hebraizing of surnames by, 151
in, 6163; immigrant name-change, author: birth story, 5; fabrications of,
148; totemism in, 117; Zimbabwe 165166; family genealogical search,
celebrating names, 6364 101102, 102; Himes last name, 13,
agricultural practices, nomadology and, 14, 1416, 79; influence of Jewish
3839 background, 24, 9394; Mavis first
Albright, Madeleine, 156 name, 13, 14, 16; patients' family
America: Farmer, as genealogical dynamics constraints, 173175; Sinai
research founder, 104; rights to name desert travel experiences, 33, 3435,
in, 153. See also North America 36, 37; temporary voluntary name-
American Society of Human Genetics, change, 129130, 131132
107 Autobigraphie de mon pre
And Their Name: They Changed It. See (Autobiography of My Father)
Et leur nom, ils lont chang (Pachet), 154
angel of death confusion, Judaism on Autobiographical Study (Freud, S.), 178
name-changes for, 19, 20 Autobiography of My Father. See
anthropology, primitive man and, Autobigraphie de mon pre
117120
Antigone (Sophocles), 171 Bachelard, Gaston, 4
213
214 INDEX
Badiet el Tih, Wilderness of brand paraphernalia, entertainment

Wandering., 36 personalities names on, 88
Balint, Michael, 143 breath of life. See nishmat chaim
baptismal christening, of Christians, 60 Breton, Andr, 78
Bar-Ilan University, Project for the Study British Royal Family genealogy, 105106
of Jewish Names at, 151 Bronstein, Lev Davidovich (Leon
Basoalto, Ricardo Eliecer Neftal Reyes Trotsky), 135
(aka Pablo Neruda), 133 Die Brder Himmler: Eine deutsche
Baumfree, Isabella (aka Sojourner Truth), Familiengeschichte (The Himmler
135 Brothers: A German Family History),
being: infant awakening into, 7; name as 160
invitation to, 4; names as physical Brunschwig, Jacques, 190191
substrate of, 4 Buddhism, 136
Benjamin, Walter, 26
Benny, Jack, 136 Cain, genealogy of, 31
Bergmann, Mihly Maurice (aka Michael Canada: potlatch outlaw by, 116; rights to
Balint), 143 name in, 153. See also Toronto
Besarionis dze Dzhughashvili, Ioseb (aka Carlyle, Thomas, 57
Joseph Stalin), 135 Carroll, Lewis, 132, 188189, 195
Bettina (grandniece of Goering), 160 Catherine II the Great, 2829, 135
beyond the Pale, 179180 causal theory of reference, 197
Bible: creation story, 2930; Freud, S., Cavarero, Adriana, 79
inscription in, 177178; genealogy of celebrating names, 5970, 88; African
Cain, 31; New Testament names, 32; traditions, 6163; Christian baptismal
Table of Nations genealogy, 31; christening, 60; of Chukchi people, of
Twelve Tribes of Israel names, 3132; Russia, 6768; Dedication ceremony,
Western civilization naming template, 60; in Hinduism, 6061; in Judaism,
29 5960; in Libya, 6970; of Mohawk
Bible, voluntary name-changing in: of tribe, 68; in North American Ojibway
Abraham, 138139; from Jacob to tribe, 6467; in Zimbabwe, 6364
Israel, 139140; of Saul of Tarsus, celebrities and artists, voluntary name-
137138 changing, 132; family identification
biblical names, 2627, 32 and, 134; female composers, 134135;
biological kinship ties, 120 from Jewish to Christian names, 132;
biological parents, given name literature pen names, 132133;
psychological division from, 3 Sojourner Truth and, 135; van Gogh
birth preference, of boys, 109 and, 134
birth story: Abraham name from chaim (essence of life), 14
circumstances of, 2627; of author, 5; La Changer de nom (Lapierre), 148;
entry on stage of life, 56. See also Pachet interview in, 155
genealogical search character, names influence on, 7374
Blair, Eric Arthur (aka George Orwell), Chichester, Christopher (aka Christian
133 Gerhartsreiter), 135
bloodlines, 105; genetic purity desire, Childe, Vere Gordon, 38
106107 children: German, named after Hitler, 50,
Bloodlines documentary, 160 161, 194; inheritance of, 81; name
Brand, Adolph Johannes (aka Abdullah choice for legitimacy of, 54; of
Ibrahim), 137 scandalous parents, voluntary name-
changing by, 159161
I N DE X 215
China, name choice in, 5758 dependency, on common names, 189

Christian (secular) name, 27, 52; for derivations, of names, 40
everyday use, 14; resemblance to descriptivist theory, 197
Hebrew name, 1314 dharma master. See Ji Do Poep Sa Nim
Christians: baptismal christening, 60; Diana, Princess of Wales, 106, 168
names, voluntary name-changing from disarray feelings, from namelessness, 11
Jewish to, 132; tree of life, 98 Disgrace (Coetzee), 50
The Chukchi Bible (Rytkheu), 67 distance, namelessness creation of, 10
Chukchi people, of Russia, 6768 Divisadero (Ondaatje), 20
circumcision covenant, of Abraham, 59 Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (aka Lewis
City of Yes (Oliva), 58 Carroll), 132, 188189, 195
class reference, to common names, 198 Dollar Brand. See Abdullah Ibrahim
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (aka Mark domesticated plants and animals,
Twain), 132 nomadology of, 39
Coetzee, J. M., 50 double first names, confusion from, 44
common names: class reference, 198; Down and Out in Paris and London
dependency on, 189; original source of (Orwell), 133
named individual, 194; proper name Dylan, Bob, 132, 196
turned into, 198199; Stoics creation
of, 190191; word usage meaning Edict of Napoleon, names during, 13
shared, 199 Egyptian mythology, on power in name,
community link, to names, 10 17, 18
conception, name assignment at, 3 Elective Affinities (Goethe), 75
confusion: to angel of death, Judaism Eliot, George, 106107, 132
name-changing for, 19, 20; from luard, Paul, 78
double first names, 44; mental, from emotional weight, of name-changes,
namelessness, 11 153154
connotative names, 195 Erikson, Erik, 144
Conrad, Joseph, 132133 essence of life. See chaim
contraction. See tzimtzum ethnic identity: involuntary name-
corruption, name-changing due to past, changing and, 156157, 158159;
135 voluntary name-changing hiding,
Cratylus, 191192, 198 143144
Cratylus (Plato), 191 ethnic origins, 13, 45, 147; immigrants
cultural determinists, 119120 and, 148, 148149; from surnames, 45
cultural secularization, of Jews, 26 Et leur nom, ils lont chang (And Their
Name: They Changed It), 152
Dal, Salvador, 7879 etymology, 38, 39, 5152
Daniel Deronda (Eliot), 106107 eurythmy, in Waldorf teaching, 182
Darwin, Charles, 107 Evans, Mary Ann (aka George Eliot),
Darwish, Mahmoud, 187 106107, 132
Das Patent ber die Judennamen decree, exogamy, 118
for Jews, 27 expedition leaders, place names from, 88
deceased relatives, naming for, 8, 14, 19,
27, 43 fabricated past, 165166
Deleuze, Gilles, 9798, 104 fame, naming associated with, 189190
demonology, 2021 family, 50, 134; author genealogical
Demsky, Aaron, 151152 search for, 101102, 102; author's
denotative names, 195 patients' on dynamics of, 173175;
216 INDEX
different names within, 149; hereditary Ojibway tribe name celebration, 6467
names, 26; identification, inheritance first pattern, of name calling, 8
of, 83; loyalty, social ranking and, 89; fixed kinship ties, 120
name, reverting to original, 158159; Fliess, William, 177
name similarities within, 169170; of La force du nom: Leur nom, ils lont
Nazis, 159161; secrets, of involuntary chang (Masson), 152
name-changing, 156157; tree, in Tree The Force of Things (Stille, A.), 172
of Life, 99100 Forester, C. S., 132
family history: fascination with, 100101; Fowler, Alastair, 194195, 196
Jews search disadvantage, 102; oral Fraenkel, Sandor (aka Ferenczi), 143
traditions and, 42; surname links to France: Jews fixed first and second name
past and, 45 decree, 29; return to foreign-sounding
Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in names prevented in, 153
America (Weil), 86 Frank, Hans, 160
Farmer, John, 104 Freud, Jakob, 177, 177178
fascination, with family history, 100101 Freud, Sigismund Schlomoh "Sigmund",
father: authority of, religious tradition 26, 75, 99, 123, 143, 176178; Bible
invocation of, 125126; intervention inscription, 177178; on fabricated
between mother and infant, 122124; past, 165166; Judaism and, 26,
Lacan on intervention of, 123; primal, 177178; Oedipal complex, 120121,
Freud, S, on totem animal as, 121; on totem animal as primal father,
121122; symbolic dimension of life 121122; on unconscious, 176
and, 123124. See also paternal Freud's Moses (Yerushalmi), 177
metaphor From Oedipus to Moses: Freuds Jewish
father, name of, 109126; boys birth Identity (Robert), 177
preference, 109; female infanticide,
109110; feminists and, 113; identity Galton, Francis, 107
of father confirmation, 113114; Gardiner, Alan Henderson, 199
naming patterns struggle, 110113; Gaud i Cornet, Antoni Plcid Guillem, 98
patriarchy explanation, 113114; Gehry, Frank, 133
primitive man and anthropology, genealogical search: by author, 101102,
117120; suffix or prefix, in Judaism, 102; Farmer as American founder of,
14; totemism and, 115117 104; by Rimsky, 103
female, 113; composers, 134135; deities, Genealogical Society of Utah, 104
110; infanticide, 109110; named after genealogy: bloodlines, 105, 106107; of
flowers and trees, in Israel, 129; British Royal Family, 105106; of
presence of God, 110; voluntary name- Cain, 31; Farmer as founder of
changing, 141143 research in America, 104; Table of
Ferenczi, 143 Nations, 31; Tree of Life and,
Fiddler on the Roof, 171172 103104; of Twelve Tribes of Israel, 25
first name, 29; additional, for middle genetic purity, 106107, 107
name, 46; author's, 13, 14, 16; in casual genetic research, 107; of contemporary
conversation, 9; double, confusion Jewish populations, 107
from, 44; intimacy of, 9; personal, geographical and/or ethnic marker, from
cultural, religious practices reflection, surnames, 45
45; plus two surnames, in Spain, 55 George V (king), 105106
First Nations cultures: Mohawk tribe Gerhartsreiter, Christian (aka Clark
name celebration, 68; mononyms in, Rockefeller), 135
53; name choice by tribal elders, 43;
I N DE X 217
German children, named after Hitler, 50, Hinduism, 6061

161, 194 history, of naming, 2629; addition of
gift. See potlatch suffixes, to second names, 28; biblical
given name, 4, 43; Ashkenazi Jews adding names, 2627, 32; Christian names, 27;
chaim to, 14; mark of identity, 3; as hereditary family names, 26; Jewish
means of calling, 8; psychological surnames, from German compounds,
division, from biological parents, 3; 28; Jews naming law changes, 27;
psychological impact of, 77; naming restrictions ended, 27
randomness lack for, 9; sociological Hitler, Adolf: German children named
trends and socio-cultural movements after, 50, 161, 194; removal of Jews
on, 50; tradition over personal choice actual names by, 1011
in, 43; uniqueness of, family relative Hitler's Children documentary, 159160,
for middle name, 50; variations since 160
1950s, 50 Homberger, Theodor, 144
God, 19; female presence of, 110; name house metaphor, for name, 4, 163182;
utterance forbidden, 18 author's patients family dynamics
Goering, Herman, 160 constraints, 173175; inheritance from
Goethe, 75, 175 parents, 164; modeling and
Goldberg, Owen (aka Frank Gehry), 133 construction of, 165; name acceptance,
Gth, Amon Leopold, 160161 167168; name neutrality, 168; as
Greek names: etymological meanings in, psychological foundation, 164; rituals
5152; solitary names, 51 of ancestors, 164
Greenblatt, Stephen, 8485 House of Benarda Alba (Lorca), 13
group identification, totemism and, 118 hunter-gathers, in nomadology, 38, 39
Guattari, Flix, 9798, 104
identity: ethnic, 143144, 156157,
The Hare with Amber Eyes (de Waal, E.), 158159; of father confirmation,
95 113114; given name as mark of, 3;
Hartman, Rabbi, 25 new, social media and, 166; Pachet on
haute couture designers, 8687 self, 155156
Hebrew name, 151; Christian name immigrants: of Africa, name-change by,
resemblance to, 1314; middle name 148; ethnic origin and, 148, 148149;
in honor of deceased relative, 14; involuntary name-changing during
reserved for festivities and rituals, 14 experience of, 147; prejudice and, 148,
Hebrews, 37; language of, 4041, 41; 149, 154
word for knowledge, 18 incest taboo, 118, 122, 124, 125
Heimovitch, Morris (author's infant, 7; father intervention between
grandfather), 14, 130, 131 mother and, 122124; mother
Hensel, Fanny, 134 interaction with, 67, 122, 185186;
Hermogenes, 191192 name recognition, 6; as speaking
Hertwig, Monika (ne Gth), 160161 being, 7
Himes (author's last name), 14, 79; inheritance, 125; of children, 81; of family
ancestral history of, 13; original name identification, 83; genetic makeup and,
and change to, 1416 8182; name as, 164; personal
Himmler, Ernst, 160 interpretation of name, 175176; of
Himmler, Heinrich, 160 personality traits, 9293; of property
The Himmler Brothers: A German Family and worldly goods, 8283; social
History. See Die Brder Himmler: convention standards, 92; transmission
Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte and, 8189; of de Waal, E., 9596
218 INDEX
Inheritance, 161 Ji Do Poep Sa Nim (JDPSN) (dharma

In Red (Tulli), 169 master), 136
The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, S.), John Paul II (Pope), 157
178 Joyce, James, 195196
In the Presence of Absence (Darwish), 187 Judaism, 2425; angel of death confusion
In the Shadow of the Reich, 160 by name-change, 19, 20; celebrating
intimacy, of first name use, 9 names in, 5960; father's name suffix
involuntary name-changing, 145162; or prefix, 14; Freud and, 26, 177178;
different names within family, 149; Hebrew and secular name, 1314, 26;
ethnic identity and, 156157, 158159; Lacan and, 26; name as soul and vital
family secrets of, 156157; during force, 1718; name-change ritual, 19;
immigrant experience, 147; Lapierre name of God utterance forbidden, 18;
on, 148149; oppression and, 145, 146, newborn taking name of deceased, 19;
148, 158; reverting to original family on record of name inscribed by God,
name, 158159; Zionism identification 19; Tree of Life in, 98; Twelve Tribes
and, 151 of Israel genealogy link, 25
Isis, 17, 98 Juliet (character), in Romeo and Juliet,
Israel: author temporary name-change in, 170171
129130, 131132; Jacob name-
change to, 139140; Jews middle Kabbalistic thought, 1819
names of, 10. See also Twelve Tribes of Kafka, Franz, 26
Israel Kaminker, Simone-Henriette (aka
Issa. See Siberry, Jane Simone Signoret), 132
Katrin (granddaughter of Himmler, E.),
Jabs, Edmond, 4, 41 160
Jacob, name-change to Israel, 139140 King Lear (character), 8485
Jacobs, Joseph, 106107 kinship ties, biological and fixed, 120
Japan, name choice in, 58 knowledge, Hebrew word for, 18
JDPS. See Ji Do Poep Sa al-Koni, Ibrahim, 69
JDPSN. See Ji Do Poep Sa Nim Konigsberg, Allen (aka Woody Allen), 132
Jews, 19; Albright hidden background of, Korzeniowski, Jzef Teodor Konrad (aka
156; anti-Semitism, as name-change Joseph Conrad), 132133
reason, 15, 1516, 132, 143, 152; Kripke, Saul, 197
author's influence from background of, Kubelsky, Benjamin (aka Jack Benny),
24, 9394; biblical names, 2627; 132
cultural secularization of, 26;
demonology and, 2021; documentary Lacan, Jacques, 24, 75, 99; on father's
on surname change of, 152153; intervention, 123; Judaism, 26. See also
family history search disadvantage, paternal metaphor
102; genealogy of Twelve Tribes of Lacanian psychoanalysts, name-change
Israel, 25; genetic research of opposition by, 157
contemporary, 107; Hitler removal of Lartes, Diogenes, 191
actual names of, 1011, 153; Leigh on language: acquisition of, 8, 185186;
journeys of, 41; middle names, of generation of, 186187; human
Israel and Sarah, 10; name-change due capacity for, 186
to tragedy, 20; population, in Russia, Lapierre, Nicole: on involuntary name-
2829; surname and, 2728, 152. See changes, 148149; Pachet interview
also Ashkenazi Jews with, 155
Ji Do Poep Sa (JDPS), 136
I N DE X 219
Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish Moll, James, 161

People (Ostrer), 107 mononymous people, 51, 52; famous
Legendre, Pierre, 157158 people and, 53; in First Nations
Leigh, Jeremy, 41 culture, 53
Lewis Carroll Society of North America, monotheism, 125
132 Monroe, Marilyn, 198
Libya, name celebration in, 6970 Moses, Ten Commandments and, 3334,
The Life and Opinions of Tristram 37, 125, 180181
Shandy, Gentleman (Sterne), 73 Moses and Monotheism (Freud, S.), 178
linguistic theory, on common names, 190 mother, infant interaction with, 67, 122,
literary characters, names for, 195 185186
Literary Names: Personal Names in Mller, Max, 119
English Literature (Fowler), 194195
literature pen names, 132133 name calling: denial of response to, 89;
London Gazette, 105, 106 first pattern of, 8; parental power and
Lorca, Federico Garcia, 13 control by, 8
The Lurie Legacy (Rosenstein), 24 name-changes, 20, 157; by African
immigrants, 148; anti-Semitism as
Malkah, author temporary name-change reason for, 15, 1516, 132, 143, 152;
to, 129130, 131132 due to traumatic identifications,
Maple Ki Forest Spirit Waters, 141 161162; emotional weight of,
Marmur, Dow, 156 153154; from historical event, 154; of
marriage, 118; name-changes from, 45, ill, by Ashkenazi Jews, 19; impact on
127 society, 88; Judaism on, angel of death
Masson, Cline, 153 confusion by, 19, 20; Lacanian
Matasschanskay, Walter (aka Walter psychoanalysts opposition to, 157;
Matthau), 132 from marriage, 45, 127; positive
matronyms, 46 anticipations from, 154; positive
Matthau, Walter, 132 intention of, 158; Toronto's Globe and
Mavis (author's first name), 13, 14; Mail on, 56; from transformation
meaning of, 13, 16 experience, 140143; from traumatic
Meghnagi, David, 26 identifications, 161162. See also
Mendelssohn, Felix, 134135 involuntary name-changing; shinui
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Ccilie hashem; voluntary name-changing
"Fanny", 134135 name choice, 4355; after admired
mental confusion, from namelessness, 11 person, 4849; bizarre, unusual,
mental illness, 78, 134, 173 difficult-sounding names, 44; for child
mentoring relationships, 176 legitimacy, 54; of Chinese proper
meshanneh shem (person additional names, 5758; Christian names, 52;
names), 19 double first names, 44; in First Nations
middle names, 47, 49, 161, 167; additional cultures, 43; given names by birth
first name or surname for, 46; family circumstances, 52; in Greek names,
relative for, 50; Hebrew, in honor of 5152; in Japan, 58; Junior or Senior
deceased relative, 14; of Israel and words of title, 43; mispronunciation or
Sarah, by Jews, 10; in proper name, 43 misspelling, corrections for, 4748;
Millet, Catherine, 7879 North America originality in, 4850;
Mirvish, Edwin, 87 patronym or matronym personal
Mohawk tribe, 68 name, 46; rhythmic composition of,
Moir, Esther, 96 5758; second family name demand,
220 INDEX
54; second names, for written paternal metaphor and, 124; rituals of,
documentation of land records, 53; 4; status, fame, fortune associated
situational use of, 4344; from socio- with, 189190; in Western civilization,
political climate, 51; sound of, being 32, 43
repelled by, 5051; in Spain, 55; Napoleonic decree, for Jews surname
traditional-sounding names leading to requirement, 2728
admission, 44; tradition over personal National Genealogical Society, in
choice, 43 Washington, D.C., 104
name is an omen. See nomen est omen Nazis: genetic purity and, 106; names of
namelessness, 1011; distance created Jews eliminated by, 1011, 153
from, 10; Hitler removal of Jews actual Nazis, family of, 160161; Bettina,
names, 1011, 153; mental confusion grandniece of Goering, 160; Bloodlines
and disarray from, 11 documentary, 160; Hitler's Children
name-of-the-father. See paternal documentary, 159160, 160; Katrin,
metaphor granddaughter of Himmler, E., 160
names: assignment at conception, 3; from Neolithic revolution, 3839
birth circumstances, of Abraham, Neruda, Jan, 133
2627; blood ties assignment of, 120; Neruda, Pablo, 133
community link, 10; connotative and neuroses, names link to, 75
denotative, 195; of deceased sibling, 8; New England Historic Genealogical
derivations of, 40; directing of person's Society, 104
future, 74; for documents, 4, 53; new identity, social media and, 166
during Edict of Napoleon, 13; New Testament names, 32
Egyptian mythology and, 17, 18; house Niklas (son of Hans Frank), 160
metaphor for, 4, 163182; infant nishmat chaim (breath of life), 14
recognition of, 6; influence on person's nobility and ancestry, 8384
character, 7374; invitation into being, nomadology: agricultural practices and,
4; for literary characters, 195; mental 3839; domesticated plants and
illness and taking of, 78; mentoring animals, 39; hunter-gatherers, 38, 39;
relationships and, 176; neuroses link names required for property and land
to, 75; neutrality of, 168; partners claims, 3940
choice influenced by, 77; physical nomads, names and, 3342; Arab and
substrate of our being, 4; power and, 8, Hebrew people and, 37; Hebrew
17, 18; royal families as prisoner of, words and, 4041; Jabs on, 41; oral
168; similarities within family of, traditions, 4142; property and land
169170; social convention standards, claims decisions, 3940; Sinai desert
9192; society history and fashion and, 3335
reflection, 151152; superstitions nomenclature, 40, 187; totemism link to,
surrounding, 19. See also common 119
names; first name; given name; house nomen est omen (name is an omen), 76
metaphor; middle names; proper nomination, 187
name; surname Norrie, Julianna, 141142
naming: act of, 187188; act of North America: feminist movement
summoning into existence, 1617; modification to naming, 56; infant
Bible creation story and, 2930; naming celebration in privacy of home,
Canada rights to, 153; celebration of, 59; Mohawk tribe name celebration,
16, 5970; for deceased relatives, 8, 68; name choice originality, 4850;
14, 19, 27, 43; history of, 2629, 32; Ojibway tribe name celebration, 6467
infant awakening into being, 7;
I N DE X 221
Obreht, Ta, 89 Poulenc, Francis Jean Marcel, 176

Oedipal complex, 120121, 121 power, names and, 8, 17, 18
Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), 120 prejudice, immigrants and, 148, 149, 154
Oliva, Peter, 58 priests, voluntary name-changing, 136
Ondaatje, Michael, 20 Primal Horde myth, 121
onomastics, 185 Project for the Study of Jewish Names, at
oppression, 127, 145, 146, 148, 158 Bar-Ilan University, 151
oral traditions, 4142 proper name, 3, 190191; adult decision
Orwell, George, 133 for, 167; Chinese, 5758; given name,
Osiris, 98 middle name and surname in, 43;
Ostrer, Harry, 107 Plato on, 191; prosperity and triumph
advantages of, 167; psychological
Pachet, Pierre, 154155; Lapierre resonances of, 4445; as rigid
interview with, 155; on self identity, designator of object, 197198;
155156 signifiers and, 76; sonant
Pale of Settlement: naming patterns in, distinctiveness of, 199; turned into
29; Russian Jews territory, 2829 adjectives and common names,
parents: biological, given name 198199
psychological division from, 3; psychoanalysis, 124, 157, 177; fabricated
inheritance from, 164; name calling past and, 165166; name-change due
power and control, 8; scandalous, to traumatic identifications, 161162;
children name-change from, 159161; on name significance and function, 75;
transmission of, 81; wish for answers on signifiers, 76; unconscious effect of
by, 9495 names, 75
partners choice, names influence on, 77
paternal metaphor (name-of the-father), Rabant, Claude, 38
of Lacan, 123; Legendre on, 157158; Raddock, Charles, 3536
monotheism and, 125; name-change Ralph Lauren Corporation, 87
condemnation, 157; naming and, 124; Rand, Ayn, 132
psychoanalysts on, 124; transmission Rank, Otto, 143
and, 124125; universal structure of, religion, voluntary name-changing, 14;
124 Abdhullah Ibrahim, 137; association
patronyms, 154; mandatory, in some between, 127, 136140; in Bible,
countries, 46; for psychic 137140; in Buddhism, 136; by priests,
development, 158 136
Paul, Nicholas, 84 religious traditions, authority of father
pen names, in literature, 132133 invoked in, 125126
person additional names. See meshanneh renomination, 177, 181
shem repair. See tikkun
personality traits, inheritance of, 9293 repetitive language patterns, 7
place names, from expedition leaders, 88 response denial, to name calling, 89
Plato, 191 rhythmic composition, of name, 5758; of
The Poetics of Space (Bachelard), 4 Arabic-speaking people, 57; Carlyle
Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of on, 57
Canada, 156 Rimsky, Cynthia, 103
Poste Restante (Unclaimed Mail) rituals: of ancestors, 164; Hebrew name
(Rimsky), 103 reserved for festivities and, 14;
potlatch (gift), 115; Canadian government Judaism name-change, 19; of naming,
outlaw of, 116 4
222 INDEX
Robert, Marthe, 177 social media, new identity and, 166

Rockefeller, Clark, 135 social ranking and prestige, 86; family
Roman names, 52 loyalty and, 89; haute couture
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare, W.,), designers and, 8687; urban buildings
170171 and, 87
Rosenbaum, Alisa Zinovyevna (aka Ayn social standing, voluntary name-changing
Rand), 132 and, 135136
Rosenfeld, Otto (aka Otto Rank), 143 Socrates, 191, 193, 193194, 197
Rosenstein, Neil, 24 Sojourner Truth, 135
Rushdie, Salman, 133 sonant distinctiveness, of proper names,
Russia: bridegroom and father-in-law 199
same name restriction, 19; Chukchi Sophocles, 120, 171
people name celebration, 6768; The Sopranos, 92
Jewish population in, 2829 soul, Judaism on name as, 1718
Russian revolution, in 1905, 154 Spain, first name plus two surnames, 55
Rytkheu, Yuri, 67 Spinoza, Baruch, 26
Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, 135
sacred name. See shem hakadosh Steiner, Rudolph, 182
Saint Catherine's Monastery, 36 Stewart, Jane. See Siberry, Jane
Salomonsen, Waldemar Isidor, 144 Stille, Alexander, 172
The Satanic Verses (Rushdie), 133 Stille, Ugo, 172
Saul of Tarsus, 137138 Stoics, common name and proper name
Schweitzer, Albert, 195 creation, 190191
secular. See Christian Strayed, Cheryl, 141
secular name. See shem hakinuim Sumer, 3536
semantic determinism, 74 superstitions, surrounding names, 19
Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, on name surname, 4, 43; additional, for middle
as vital force, 18 name, 46; ethnic origins from, 45;
Shakespeare, John, 85 geographical and/or ethnic marker, 45;
Shakespeare, William, 8485; Juliet Jews and, 2728, 152; lineage, 77; links
character by, 170171 to past and family history, 45; Spain
shattering of the vessels. See shevirat ha- first name plus two, 55;
kelim transformations of, 54; undesirable
shem hakadosh (sacred name), 26 meanings in, 46
shem hakinuim (secular name), 26 symbolic dimension of life, father and,
shevirat ha-kelim (shattering of the 123124
vessels), 181
shinui hashem (name change) ritual, 19 Table of Nations genealogy, 31
Siberry, Jane "Issa", 128 Tpies, Antoni, 79
signifiers, 76; proper name and, 76; Taylor, E. P., 87
psychoanalysis on, 76 Ten Commandments, 3334, 37, 125,
Signoret, Simone, 132 180, 180181
Sinai desert, 3335; author travel territorial wars, as battles over title and
experiences in, 33, 3435, 36, 37; Ten name, 89
Commandments and, 3334, 37 A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and
Sinclair, Margaret, 168 Guattari), 97
Smith, Cecil (aka C. S. Forester), 132 Through the Looking-Glass, and What
Snow, Michael, 86 Alice Found There (Carroll), 188189
social convention standards, 9192 The Tiger's Wife (Obreht), 89
I N DE X 223
tikkun (repair), 181 voluntary name-changing, 127144; by

toponyms, 28 Abraham, 138139; in adoption, 127;
Toronto: Globe and Mail, on name- author temporary name-change to
change, 56; naming privileges of Malkah, 129130, 131132; in Bible,
corporations, 88; urban buildings 137140; in Buddhism, 136; by
names in, 87 celebrities and artists, 132135; by
Totem and Taboo (Freud), 120 children of scandalous parents,
totemism, 115117; in Africa, 117; Freud, 159161; from corrupt past, 135;
S., on totem animal, as primal father, ethnic identity hidden by, 143144;
121122; group identification and, persecution and oppression response
118; marriage of man to nature, 118; of, 127; for popularity and commercial
marriage prohibition among clan motivations, 127, 132135; religion
members, 118; Mller on, 119; association with, 14, 136140; by
nomenclature link to, 119 Silberry, 128; social standing and,
traditions: of African celebrating names, 135136; from transformation
6163; oral, 42; over personal choice, experience, 140143; by women,
in given name, 43; religious, of 141143
authority of father, 125126 von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, Sophie
transformation experience, name-change Friederike Auguste (aka Catherine II
from, 140143 the Great), 2829, 135
transmission, 91; as active, 81; family, of
King Lear, 8485; inheritance and, de Waal, Arthur Lowndes, 9596
8189; naming privileges, 88; of de Waal, Hendrik, 96
parents, 81; paternal metaphor and, de Waal, Victor, 96
124125 Wachtel, Eleanor, 96
traumatic identifications, name-changes Waldorf teaching, 182; eurythmy in, 182
due to, 161162 Waszkinel, Romuald, 156157
Tree of Life, 97107; family tree, 99100; Weil, Franois, 86
genealogy, 103104; in Judaism, 98; Weiner, Anthony, 74
social history, 105 Weksler, Jakub, 157
Trotsky, Leon, 135 Western civilization: Bible naming
Trudeau, Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves template, 29; naming in, 32, 43; tree
Elliott "Pierre", 168169 symbolism in, 9798
Trudeau, Justin Pierre James, 168169 Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific
Tulli, Magdalena, 169 Crest Trail (Strayed), 141
Twain, Mark, 132 Will in the World (Greenblatt), 8485
Twelve Tribes of Israel: genealogy of Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 28
Jews, 25; names, 3132; as nomads, 35 women. See female
tzimtzum (contraction), 181 Writers & Company, 96
unconscious: effect of names, 75; Freud, Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, 177

S., on, 176
urban buildings names, in Toronto, 87 Zeevi, Chonoch, 159160
Zimbabwe, celebrating names in, 6364
van Gogh, Vincent, 134 Zimmerman, Robert Allen (aka Bob
vital force, Judaism on name as, 1718 Dylan), 132
Voltaire, 134 Zionism, 151
Voltaire Foundation, 134
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mavis Himes, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in To-

ronto where she maintains a full-time private practice. She is also clini-
cal consultant at Wellspring, a cancer center for patients and their fami-
lies. Himes is the director of Speaking of Lacan Psychoanalytic Group,
a Toronto-based forum dedicated to the study of Lacanian psychoanaly-
sis. Her previous book, The Sacred Body: A Therapists Journey, is
about her work with cancer patients; as well, she frequently contributes
to professional journals and books about psychoanalysis.
225

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THE P OWER OF NAMES

THE P OWER OF NAMES

Uncovering the Mystery of

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Himes, Mavis, author.

Printed in the United States of America

NOM, name, should be read twice, from left to right

PART I: CALLED INTO EXISTENCE 1

PART II: BURDEN OR BLESSING 71

Appendix: The Language of Names 185

I wrote this book to interact with my own name through an exploration

In my dream, I am shaking hands with Jacques Lacan. I ask him his

signed to us by our parents with love, it is freighted with their expecta-

Called into Existence

AN INVITATION INTO BEING

At the moment of conception, and even earlier, when our existence is

of physiological, neuroanatomical, and biochemical cells and neurons

recognize those particular and distinctive sounds that form smoothly

Alice! [I am calling you.] Yes? [I am listening, I am here.]

Or consider the times when we use someones name in anger or

Come to dinner now, please. [no response]

As adults, we continue to be called on to respond in various situa-

to avoid the stack of bills piling up in the mailbox or consumer surveys.

Fashioned after a movie star, named after a prophet, forged in the

generic status. Then he stripped his victims even more by branding

NAMES WITH POWER

The name written on my birth certificate is Mavis Carole Himes. This

a translation from Hebrew to English (Shoshana/Rose), or by bearing a

permanence encapsulated through the letters of a name. Over and over

In both Muslim and Jewish traditions, a person experiencing a trage-

He was enjoying the mans company, as well as the womans singing

Both Gentiles and Jews wanted to be spared the fate of demons,

GO OUT AND NAME

traditionally Jewish lifethe close observance of Shabbat, regular syn-

my name, repeatedly brought me back. Immersion in my analytic stud-

ple is the family history of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned Austrian

Russian masses, the Pale of Settlement, as it was called, included the

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim vet haaretz. In the begin-

Beginning with the naming of common objects (plants, animal,

The Bible further captures the significance of naming throughout its

These universal names, the echoes of which are recounted in our

NAMES AND NOMADS

In the desert my dreams feature vast, open spaces, infinite stillness,

a trace? The outline of my footprints, my markings inscribed in their

to the ancient chronicles, which cite his birthplace as Ur Khasidim, in

Embryonic agricultural practices were adopted and refined in an ex-

performed through improvisation, to communicate past events. We are

The proper name in most Western societies is composed of the given

I want to marry Clothilde.

becomes inextricably intertwined over time. Seemingly innocuous when

name Marilyn Wong or Susan Obasanjo or when we greet an Asian man

patronyms and matronyms, a practice typical in many Muslim countries

of names is a measure of changing times and circumstances. A hero in

guttural consonantsfor example, Grammok or Pitkaare deemed

or Demetrius, the king of Macedon and the Seleucid kingdom, whose

Mononymous people, individuals known and addressed by a single

beard) versus Gelbart (yellow beard), Shein (good-looking), and Kirs-

In contemporary society, naming practices continue to vary across

and wide. As a psychotherapist also interested in Lacanian psychoanal-